


Voyage Of The Damned Idiots

by shadedScribe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Navy, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Angst, Dark Comedy, Humor, Multi, Plagiarized from the history books, Violence against Binoculars, how long could the HTML take I said, it's the proper formatting I said, put the ship names in italics I said, rated T for dark themes and Karkat swearing all the time, they're in the navy in a sort of WWI-era world that's the AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23335666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadedScribe/pseuds/shadedScribe
Summary: It's a time of war for the empire, and things aren't going well. As Alternia's far eastern conflict against the upstart Skaian Federation starts to go badly, Her Imperious Condescension assigns Karkat Vantas to lead the Northern Fleet halfway around the world to turn the tide of battle. It's an unenviable assignment, but look on the bright side: sure, the ships are outdated, the logistics are a mess, and the journey is arduous, but at least the crews are untrained and the officers are all assholes.Hm.The only way this mess has a bright side is if something got set on fire by accident again.
Relationships: Jade Harley/Dave Strider, Nepeta Leijon & Karkat Vantas, Nepeta Leijon/Feferi Peixes
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	Voyage Of The Damned Idiots

**Author's Note:**

> Me: I'm going to work on my many WIPs.
> 
> Youtube recommendations: Here's a forty-minute podcast about an obscure bit of naval history. You will watch it, something will remind you of Homestuck, and you will write and write and write.
> 
> Me: OK!
> 
> Seriously though, the things that inspire you. Plus, this thing grew two subplots mid-writing; it was going to be 10k at the start, if you can believe it.
> 
> Anyhow, this is loosely based on the real-life Russian Baltic Fleet's tragicomic doomed voyage around the world to the Sea of Japan during the Russo-Japanese war. Details have been added, subtracted, and altered freely in the service of a better story, and the ending is rather different than the real life one. Also, any matches between fake and real-life countries are strictly for logistical purposes, and no commentary on real life politics or history is intended. (IE, Skaia kind of takes the role of Japan in terms of geography and army, but is much, much, much nicer than the actual Japanese Empire).
> 
> Sorry I haven't been writing more for y'alls quarantine entertainment. I haven't had as much time off lately as I would like on account of being an Essential Worker(TM), but my store is finally cutting hours so I should get some more time off soon. No promises, though. Happy reading!

Rear Admiral Karkat Vantas stood in front of the great gold-inlaid doors of the Imperial throne room and used every ounce of naval discipline he had in him to not fidget nervously. The Condesce’s summons had been delivered a day earlier by a junior officer, rather than immediately beforehand by a group of soldiers, which meant that this was a ‘you have an assignment’ summons, rather than a ‘you are being summarily executed’ summons, but that wasn’t very reassuring, since Karkat had a fairly good idea about what he was going to be assigned to do.

The doors swung open, and an army general staggered out, a huge bruise purpling on his face. Karkat recognized him as the general who had recently fallen for a feigned attack and allowed Skaian forces to effect a landing near an important position in the east. He had finally gotten back to the capital to explain himself, and the Condesce had answered. If he had gotten off with a measly bruise, that meant Her Imperious Condescension must be in a good mood today. Small favors.

Karkat entered the throne room at the herald’s prompting, walked up to the throne, and bowed appropriately low.

“Vantas.” the Condesce drawled from where she was lounging on a golden throne worth more than some small countries. 

“How may I be of service, your Majesty?” Karkat answered.

“As I’m sure you’re aware, the war in the east could be going better.”

That was an understatement. The Skaian Federation, a relatively new, mostly-human country forged out of some small-to-moderate sized islands in the far eastern oceans, had recently gone to war with Alternia in order to forestall the Empire’s colonization program and defend its coastal allies. Although Alternia had a massive advantage in size and population, the Skaians had a highly developed industrial base, and the Skaian Navy, led by its wunderkind of an admiral, Jade Harley, had scored several victories at sea, and trapped the two squadrons of the Eastern Fleet in Alternia’s two eastern ports, Point Violet and Eastcrown. Skaian command of the seas and various failures on the part of the Alternian Army had allowed Skaian forces to besiege Point Violet by land as well, threatening to cut off a vital piece of the Empire’s colonization efforts. The east needed naval reinforcements badly, but there were none available that would be even remotely practical to send. But that apparently wasn’t going to stop the Condesce. Karkat braced for the inevitable.

“I’m promoting you to Vice Admiral.” the Condesce continued. “You are to take command of the Northern Fleet, sail to the eastern theatre, join up with our remaining naval forces, and destroy the Skaian fleet, or at least prevent it from resupplying their ground forces. Understood?”

“Yes, your Majesty.” Karkat very carefully kept his face impassive.

“Take the princess with you, too. She could use some martial experience. I’m assigning her a battleship, but you’re still in overall command. Don’t worry about royal considerations in battle.”

Translation: The Condesce thought that Princess Feferi could use some toughening up or something, and was thus sending her off to war, and if she died, she died. At least Karkat didn’t have to worry about her.

Karkat tried not to sound rote as he spoke next. 

“I will do my utmost to ensure our nation’s victory.” he said, rotely.

“See that you do, guppy.” The Condesce waved him off. “Now, get going. You’ve got a lot of planning to do, and I want you to set off as soon as possible.”

“Of course, your Majesty.” Karkat bowed low again and walked briskly out of the throne room. 

It was just as he had feared. It was his job to take the Northern Fleet halfway around the world in order to get it blown out of the water by the Skaians. He would have been better off just getting executed.

\------------------

Later that evening, Karkat sighed wearily as he looked over the list of ships that he was going to take command of. On paper, he had a formidable force: eleven battleships and nineteen cruisers, with an assorted detritus of destroyers and torpedo boats surrounding them. In practice, however, the force was sorely lacking. Only four of the battleships could in any sense be described as modern; the rest were outdated at best and museum pieces at worst. The cruisers were in a similar state; a few of them were essentially just repurposed yachts with minimal armor hastily tacked on and a few guns mounted wherever they would fit. The rest of the fleet had just been thrown together from whatever had been available, and what was available was mostly poorly maintained, outdated vessels, the stuff too old for serious combat operations but not worth sending to the scrapyard yet. 

And the state of the ships was only the start of the problem. Nearly all of the actually good officers and sailors in the Alternian Navy were either still in the Western Fleet keeping an eye on the Dersites, or had already been in the east in anticipation of a potential war. Karkat himself would probably have been out east, except that political maneuvering had seen him relegated to a less significant post managing supplies, since other officers coveted the glory of what they had assumed would be a relatively easy war against Skaia. But it hadn’t been an easy war, and thanks to the mounting casualties, Karkat was now the only flag officer left in the navy who wasn’t either hopelessly incompetent, corrupt, or both; hence this assignment. (Being consistently competent and non-corrupt had gotten him surprisingly far in his naval career, and was probably the main reason that the Condesce tacitly ignored looking into the whole ‘mutant’ thing, or so Karkat assumed.) 

There were also way too many goddamn nobles under his command. Since the reforms, the officer corps of the Alternian Navy was generally a mix of bored nobility who liked the idea of military command or couldn’t swing any better jobs, and of officers who had come up from the ranks through actual battle and experience. Usually, the nobles were lousy officers, and the others were better, and there was a mix of the two to keep things balanced. But the Northern Fleet had been allowed to get a much higher proportion of nobles than the other sections of the navy, since it hadn’t been expected to engage in any serious actions any time soon. In fact, the Northern Fleet’s nobles were worse than usual, since the fact that you could just sit around doing nothing had been a big appeal. And of course, since they were nobles, lowly old pretending-to-be-a-rustblood Karkat could order them around all he liked, but couldn’t actually punish them in any meaningful way, which would be sure to cause problems later on. Karkat could count the number of reliable captains now under his command on one hand and still have room to get a finger or two blown off.

The state of the enlisted men was just as bad; all of the more experienced sailors had been transferred east and replaced by conscripts from inland that knew nothing about the sea. Even the actual sailors that had been left over had been sitting around in port for months on end, with officers that mostly didn’t bother with boring things like ‘discipline’ or ‘training’. There were numerous sailors in their midst that had yet to experience leaving port, for fuck’s sake, but the Condesce wanted them to get to the eastern theatre as soon as possible, so there was no time for training.

And that didn’t even get into the logistics of the journey. Just to get to the operational theatre would require the Northern Fleet to sail a slight distance of, oh, _thirty thousand fucking kilometers_ , largely through tropical waters, using ships that had been designed and fitted out for short operations in arctic waters. And not only did Alternia have absolutely no supply bases of their own along the way, all of the bases that were on the way were controlled by powers that were indifferent to Alternia at best, and hostile at worst. That meant that they would have to resupply and refuel mostly at sea using hired colliers, which was going to be fun. And to top it all off, in order to avoid waste, the Condesce had decided to avoid allocating them too much ammunition; they would have enough to fight one major naval engagement, and a little dribble extra for contingencies, but that was it. All in all, the whole thing looked like a recipe for disaster to Karkat.

But hey, he was going to be commanding it whether he liked it or not, so he had best look on the bright side. Perhaps the sheer audacity of the move would catch the Skaians by surprise. (A thirty-thousand kilometer voyage, going right by Prospit, which would surely report every detail to their semi-allies in Skaia? Not fucking likely. No, no, no, must think positive.) And sure, some of the ships were old (and would drag down the operational effectiveness of the whole group by forcing others to slow up to match their pace- be positive, Karkat!), but a gun was a gun, and quantity had a quality all its own. At least Karkat had actual combat experience, unlike some of the idiots who had tried to command the battles up to this point. (Of course, Admiral Harley had a fair bit of combat experience of her own, in which she had put paid to three separate Alternian admirals already- _be positive, Karkat!_ ) 

You know what? He could do this. He was Karkat Vantas. He had been fighting for years. He had taken acting-command of a half-dead cruiser and three frigates and tricked Commodore Droll’s fleet into sailing into their own minefield. He had kept the Archagent out of Port Imperia with nothing but a dozen shore guns and five old cruisers. He had run the guns of the Midnight Strait and trapped the Black Fleet in harbor at the Battle of Ederas. He could do this.

(He couldn’t do this. But he would try anyhow.)

A sharp knock on the door of his office shook him out of his thoughts. Captain Nepeta Leijon, his chief of staff, poked her head around the doorframe.

“Sir, Captain Maryam’s here.”

“Thanks. Send her in.”

Kanaya walked in and sat down on the other side of the desk. She and Karkat had been friends since the naval academy, and fought together in numerous battles. And although her coolness under fire and reliability hadn’t carried her as far in the service as Karkat’s talents for logistics and screaming at people had carried him, they had still carried her. Kanaya was the captain of the heavy cruiser _Rainbow_ , which was one of the few modern cruisers Karkat now had, with Kanaya being one of the even fewer reliable captains.

“Congratulations on your promotion, Karkat.” said Kanaya.

“Gee, thanks. I especially like the plum assignment that came with it.”

Kanaya chuckled a little. “I’m guessing you wanted to see me about that.”

“Yeah. How would you like to captain a battleship?” Karkat didn’t really have any confidence in three out of four of the captains of the modern battleships, and if Kanaya wanted an upgrade, she was getting one.

Kanaya thought for a moment. “While I appreciate the offer, I do believe that I have the control of the _Rainbow_ down to a science, and a shift in command would only result in an unpleasant period of adjustment at a very inopportune moment.”

Karkat nodded. “I kind of thought you might say that, but I thought I should offer.”

“It was quite thoughtful.” said Kanaya. “Have you picked a flagship yet?”

Karkat sighed. He had been waiting to see if Kanaya wanted one of the modern battleships before picking one, but he had better get to it. _Trident_ was being assigned to Princess Feferi, and Karkat didn’t really feel like dealing with the politics of that. _Death’s Head_ was captained by Aradia Megido, another of the rare reliable captains, who didn’t need Karkat standing over her shoulder. Karkat had mulled assigning Nepeta to command one of the battleships, but had decided that the benefits of having her do so didn’t outweigh the problem of needing to get a new chief of staff. Not to mention that Nepeta wouldn’t have wanted the post. That left _Scythe_ , captained by the nervous and indecisive Tavros Nitram, and _Talon_ , captained by obnoxious social climber and general slimeball Zebruh Codakk.

If Karkat had to deal with Codakk for any extended period of time, he would have to have himself court-martialed for strangling the man to death.

“I guess I’ll put the flag on the _Scythe_.” he told Kanaya. “And we can get this suicide mission over with.”

“I would hardly call it a suicide mission, Karkat.” said Kanaya. “We can always surrender. Or try to scatter and flee to be interned in neutral ports.”

“Oh, of course, how could I forget.” Karkat groused. “Clearly that’s worth sending the fleet thousands of kilometers outside of its operational range to try and salvage a war that was lost the minute that moron Dualscar let Admiral Harley’s torpedo boats ambush him like that.”

“To be fair, she used some fairly clever tactics to get him there.” Kanaya pointed out.

“Yeah, yeah, the diversionary cruiser squadron, I read the reports.” Karkat grumbled. “He still should have known better than to fall for that fake gap in her line, and just gone ahead and attacked. Even if he had still lost he would have at least damaged their fleet a lot more heavily. Has that jackass been paroled yet?”

“I’m not sure, actually.” said Kanaya.

“The Skaians still have him.” Nepeta called cheerfully from the other room. “Apparently he’s resisting being sent back to Alternia in fear of what the Condesce is going to do to him.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” Ordinarily, Karkat would have been a lot more cheered by the thought of someone he disliked as much as Dualscar facing the Condesce’s displeasure, but right now he was a little distracted by the likelihood that he would be facing it himself soon enough.

“Whatever.” Karkat waved everything off. “Let’s just get some sleep, so we can get started tomorrow.”

\-------------------

Three days later, Karkat was on the bridge of the _Scythe_ , finally getting underway. (Some careless workers doing some last-minute fitting out on _Talon_ had taken off some of the sheathing, failed to check their work, and left the ship to sink at anchor when they went home for the day. The Condesce had taken Karkat’s reports on the delay with perfect calmness, cheer, and understanding, while idly sharpening her trident.)

Karkat was actually feeling a little better about his life. He had been in the service long enough that he was honestly rather fond of the sea and even a fleet as ramshackle as this one looked pretty impressive as it started off. The wind was in his hair (figuratively speaking), and everything was looking up. He watched the ship’s bow part the water as they made their way out of the harbor, and relaxed.

Wait a minute. He saw something.

“Captain Nitram,” he started, “make sure we don’t hit that-”

There was an awful _skeeerunch_ , and the ship stopped dead.

“-sandbar. Goddamnit.”

“Uh,” said Tavros, “we, ah, appear to have run aground.”

“Wow, you don’t fucking say.”

Across the way, one of the cruisers jerked suddenly, and there was a loud snapping noise; the ship had failed to pull up or secure its anchor properly, and the whole assembly had gone over the side. Karkat pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t even need to turn his binoculars back at the Condesce’s reviewing stand to know that she was giving him a Look.

A few hours later, while waiting impatiently for _Scythe_ to work itself free, Nepeta tried to console him.

“At least we got the nonsense over with quickly?” she tried.

As if on cue, there was a loud crash of metal. One of the destroyers had been trying to get in a position to get out of the harbor faster when they started up again (ignoring Karkat’s order to hold position) and had accidently rammed into the antique battleship _Lance_. The battleship was fine, but Karkat could see water pouring into the destroyer through his binoculars; it would have to go back to the harbor for repairs and be left behind. 

Karkat stormed onto the observation deck, yelling an enraged garble that was completely unintelligible except for a few half-formed curses. The binoculars went sailing into the ocean in a fit of pique.

“Do we need someone to, ah, go get those?” asked Tavros.

Nepeta chuckled and gestured to the large crate sitting conspicuously in the corner of the bridge. Tavros lifted the lid to see that it was full to the brim with extra binoculars.

\---------------------

After all that nonsense was taken care of, the ships finally got underway. A few days later, Karkat was sitting at the bridge, contemplating their route. First they would get out of Alternian waters, loop around the narrow straits between the Proxian peninsula and Ohtraga, cross the Grey Sea, and sail the channel between Prospit’s main island and the mainland to get into the Asteran Ocean. Since the Prospitians, technically neutral in the war but still heavily favoring Skaia over Alternia, weren’t letting them use their canal systems connected to the Inland Sea, the fleet had to go all the way around the southern continent, cross the Natamel Ocean, and sail through some more islands, before finally getting to the Surro Strait, which they could use to get into the Sea of Lowas, the coastline of which held both Point Violet and Eastcrown.

That was assuming, of course, that the Skaian fleet wouldn’t be waiting for them at Surro, which it most likely would be. It was also assuming that the Northern Fleet would make it that far, which Karkat still had hopes for, but which was starting to look less and less likely the more they sailed. 

He had known that discipline and training had been bad in the fleet, but he hadn’t imagined it would be like this! They could barely keep a formation! There had been several more near-rammings already, and many ships had shown a disturbing lack of knowledge when it came to signals. Numerous minor but important shipboard tasks were routinely neglected on most ships, apparently because many of the officers didn’t know or care enough to see that they were done. Attempts at drilling the men in naval maneuvers had gone disastrously wrong; outside of the few ships with good captains, most of the sailors hadn’t even finished basic training. The conscripts didn’t even know basic naval terminology; some of them were still learning which side was port and which one was starboard. Most of the captains were, of course, jackass nobles, many of whom simply sat around in their favorite parts of the ship all day, demanding obedience and leaving everything to half-trained subordinates. Addictions and malingering ran rampant, and many ships didn’t even do proper roll calls. Karkat ordered drills and training regimens until he was blue in the face, but many ships would ignore his orders as soon as they were out of his sight.

Karkat had taken to employing _Rainbow, Death’s Head_ , and _Widowmaker_ , his only well-captained ships, almost like they were sheepdogs, staying near the edges of their formation and turning back ships that strayed too far. ( _Widowmaker_ was the least outdated of the older battleships, helmed by Captain Terezi Pyrope, and also serving as the flagship of Karkat’s second in command, Commodore Vriska Serket.)

Karkat had talked only very briefly with Princess Feferi, who was technically captain of _Trident_ now, but she at least didn’t seem to be causing any trouble. _Trident_ was swerving around like a drunkard trying to walk a line, true, but it was hardly alone in that. Karkat was dreading the moment when they encountered proper rough seas, or even tried to dock with any colliers.

He was debating whether it might be worth the effort to try and convince the Mustelian government to let them dock at Port Hatter, when Captain Nitram came rushing up to him.

“Ah, sir, we have enemy action.”

“The fuck?” Karkat goggled at him. They had barely left Alternian waters; there was no way Skaia had gotten any sort of ship this far. “Which ship reported it, and what’s the enemy?”

“The _Sea Serpent_ has reported contact with an enemy torpedo boat, sir.”

“God fucking damn it, Eridan.” Karkat dragged a hand down his face.

Eridan Ampora, who Karkat also knew from the academy days, possessed a curious combination of personal courage and paranoia; he jumped like a startled cat at anything he could perceive as even remotely threatening, but his response was to lash out and try to destroy it, rather than to flee or evade. He was arrogant, it was virtually impossible to get him to admit he was wrong about something, and he never gave up a fight, regardless of whether there might be something else that needed doing or whether he could gain anything from it. These were qualities that might have made him suited to command, say, a cavalry company on the frontier, but left him rather ill-suited to command a proper warship that had to operate in a larger command structure. Unfortunately, Eridan’s family had been in the upper echelons of the navy for decades, and Eridan was therefore the captain of the heavy cruiser _Sea Serpent_. 

“Tell the ships near _Sea Serpent_ to try and confirm the sighting.” Karkat ordered.

A minute later, after the orders had been relayed back and forth, Tavros reported back.

“None of the nearby ships report seeing any torpedo boats. _Arrow_ reports seeing an Ohtragan yacht, but that was it.”

“Fucking Eridan saw a yacht and panicked.” Karkat muttered irritably. “I suppose we’re lucky he didn’t go ahead and sink it. Signal the fleet that it was a false alarm.”

Tavros went ahead and relayed the signal, only to report back almost immediately. “Captain Ampora insists that the sighting was legitimate, sir.”

“Tell him to calm his paranoid ass down and stop making the fleet jittery.” Karkat snapped.

“Uh, yes, sir.”

Of course, it was probably too late. Sure, there was no way that Skaia could have sent any kind of vessel to intercept them even if they had known about the Northern Fleet’s deployment as soon as the Condesce gave the order. But that didn’t matter; people had heard about torpedo boats, and now they were going to be jumping at shadows the whole voyage. Honestly, you’d think that the sailors who were seeing firsthand the incredible pains that they had to go to to bring the Northern Fleet’s own torpedo boats along would have a good understanding of the limited range that a torpedo boat had.

Speaking of those pains, Karkat was reminded that they were coming up on their first scheduled coal delivery. He could only brace for impact.

Hours later, after five separate ramming incidents, a fistfight, two fires, and a promise to have the damages reimbursed that Karkat was only dubiously empowered to make, the coaling was done. It was becoming increasingly clear that the fleet’s average level of shipboard discipline would be embarrassing on a civilian vessel, much less a military one. Karkat had spent a good five minutes berating the captain of the destroyer _Spark_ , who, upon his vessel catching fire, had not only abandoned his ship and his entire crew, but had done so in the middle of a maneuver, resulting in the out of control ship ramming a cruiser. _Spark_ had only been saved by the quick intervention of _Death’s Head_ , and Karkat had demoted her captain and replaced him with the first junior officer he had found acting mostly competently, since it wasn’t as though the ship could be captained any worse. Of course, Karkat wasn’t technically authorized to demote a commissioned officer, but this one hadn’t had any connections to the nobility, so he’d been able to bluster his way into it.

Karkat was exhausted and irritated, and his mood was only worsened when Nepeta informed him that the danger of Skaian torpedo boats was the talk of the fleet. He sent out orders to the effect that there was no danger yet from the Skaian Navy, and went to bed. The fleet was crossing the Grey Sea, and in the absence of bad weather, there was nothing eventful that ever happened on the Grey Sea.

\----------------

A few hours later, Karkat was abruptly jolted out of bed by the thunder of naval guns. _Scythe_ , and probably quite a few other ships too by the sound of it, was shooting at something rather intensely. Having learned long ago to come instantly awake at the sound of gunfire, Karkat was soon back on the bridge, Nepeta following close behind.

“What the hell is going on?” he shouted as he entered.

“Oh, uh, Vice Admiral,” said Tavros. “I was just about to send a runner for you. We’ve engaged a flotilla of Skaian torpedo boats.”

“We’ve what?”

“Enemy torpedo boats, sir. We ran right into them. See for yourself, we’ve managed to get the searchlights on them.”

Karkat snatched a pair of binoculars from Nepeta’s waiting hands and looked at the spot where the searchlights of numerous ships were lighting things up. Squinting through the spray and the smoke, he finally saw....

A bunch of Prospitian fishing trawlers.

Karkat shrieked something that transcended the limits of language and went straight to the profanity dimension, and hurled the binoculars to the floor hard enough to shatter them.

“Not to worry, sir,” said Tavros, “we’re having trouble hitting them but they seem to be having trouble launching any torpedos.”

“Because they’re _not fucking torpedo boats_ , you braindead jackass! Cease fire! Cease fucking fire! Can’t you recognize a fishing trawler when you see one? Signal the fleet to cease fire!”

“Um, uh, right away, sir. Sorry, sir.” Tavros turned to the signals officer, and Karkat took another pair of binoculars from Nepeta to scan the situation.

It was immediately obvious that the fleet was in total disarray. There was no formation whatsoever; ships sailed around each other in a random mess of desperate evasive maneuvers. There wasn’t much in the way of communication either; _Rainbow_ and _Death’s Head_ were both frantically signaling to cease fire, but nobody was paying any attention.

Wait, was _Rainbow_ on fire? Had the absolute morons started firing at their fellow ship in the confusion?

They had! Even as Karkat watched, sprays of water burst up around the ship from near misses, and another stray shot hit the nearby cruiser _Sunray_. 

The second pair of binoculars snapped in half under his trembling grasp as he raised his voice as loud as it would go.

“I said, signal all ships to _cease fucking fire!_ ”

There was a booming report from further up the bow. Apparently not even the _Scythe_ had gotten the message.

“What part of ‘cease fire’ is so goddamn hard to understand?” yelled Karkat.

“Um, uh, sorry sir, we’re having trouble raising anyone in the confusion, sir.” Tavros stammered.

“To arms! To arms!” The bridge was suddenly flooded with Alternian sailors brandishing cutlasses and pistols.

“What the hell?” Karkat barked. “What are you doing?”

“Sir! You’re alright!” said a junior lieutenant. “The Skaians have boarded the ship! We need to organize the defenses.”

“The Skaians have not boarded the damn ship!” Karkat snapped.

“But I heard-”

“The Skaians haven’t boarded the ship because there _aren’t any Skaians_.” Karkat growled.

“We’re doomed!” Another group of hysterical sailors came in, wearing their lifejackets and carrying a bunch more to throw at people; one bounced off of Karkat’s face.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Karkat yelled at the newcomers.

“We’ve been torpedoed!” wailed one.

“Man the lifeboats!” cried another.

“We have not been fucking torpedoed!” Karkat shouted, incredulous. 

“But that big spray of water-”

“If the ship you’re on gets torpedoed, trust me, you will know about it.” said Karkat. “There are no torpedoes or boarders to worry about, because there aren’t actually any Skaian ships in the area. But since you’re all here, I need you to go around to the gun turrets, and tell them all to cease fire. Knock them over the head if you have to. Understood?”

“Sir, yes sir!” they chorused back as they rushed out. At least they were enthusiastic. Small fucking favors.

On the other side of the cabin, Nepeta had shoved aside _Scythe_ ’s signals officer to take over the task herself, which seemed to be helping. All Karkat could do now was sit and wait for the orders to filter out through the disorganized mess that was the Northern Fleet, listen for the gunshots dying out, and try to figure out how to control the damage on this one.

\------------------

A few hours later, Karkat, his rage crystallized into an icy calm, stood at the head of an impromptu meeting of his captains in _Scythe_ ’s mess hall. After things had died down, and the Prospitian fishing boats had been gathered up and sent on their way with the appropriate apologies (for all the good that would do), he and Nepeta had gone around and asked some pointed questions to get to the bottom of things.

The incident had started when the fleet had run into the fishing trawlers in the dark, and some panicky crewmen, on edge from Captain Ampora’s earlier false alarm about torpedo boats, had seen small ships and opened fire without bothering to confirm the identity of the targets. Once that had happened, the colossal incompetence of most of the fleet’s men and officers had let the whole thing cascade into a giant fuckup.

Undisciplined sailors had panicked and ran around doing all sorts of random nonsense in response to whatever wild thing they had last heard being shouted about, often abetted by the officers who were supposed to be keeping them under control. Gunners had seen other ships firing and started firing in the same general direction without waiting for orders or checking the targets. Several ships had nearly run into each other attempting evasive maneuvers, and several more had gotten lost and forced Karkat to send _Death’s Head_ out on a search pattern to round them up. The quality of the fleet’s signaling was so bad that many of the ships to the rear had only gotten the message that there were enemy forces, and had mistaken _Rainbow_ for an enemy ship when it had moved towards them to try and better get across its signal to cease fire. And to top it all off, they had also hit _Sunray_ by accident while mistakenly shooting at _Rainbow_.

At least both ships were fine. Since Kanaya actually, you know, trained her fucking crew, _Rainbow_ ’s damage control teams had gotten things under control almost immediately, and even managed to save _Sunray_ from the fire on her deck when that ship’s inept damage control team accidentally exploded the fire hose while trying to turn it on.

As the last few captains stumbled into the meeting room, Karkat steepled his fingers, took a calming breath, and began.

“You know, I’m not sure what the worst part of that was. I can’t decide between the fact that you all managed to mistake a fleet of fishing trawlers for a flotilla of torpedo boats that could never have actually been there in the first place, the fact that you were all so disarrayed that it took twenty goddamn minutes to get you to cease fire, or the fact that you all shot at a fleet of useless sitting-duck fishing trawlers with full intent to destroy them, at almost point blank range, for twenty fucking minutes, and only managed to sink _one_ of them!” 

“Hey, we damaged a couple more of them!” whined Captain Codakk.

Karkat threw a carafe of water at his head and he nearly fell out of his chair ducking it.

“Shut up! You know what the actual worst part is? It’s that you hit our own fucking cruisers almost as many times as you hit the fishing boats that you thought were the enemy, because you’re all a bunch of shit-for-brains idiots who apparently had their eyes gouged out and replaced with fucking ping-pong balls! No, wait, I thought of a new worst part; the fact that you all used up so much ammunition shooting at, let me reiterate, a bunch of honest and true, net-trailing, cod-smelling _fishing boats_ , that we don’t have enough left to fight a proper battle with the actual Skaians when we finally do come across them! Fucking _Talon_ -” Karkat threw a pen at Zebruh and left a smear of ink on his face- “fired nearly four hundred shells without hitting _anything_.”

The more nervous captains were looking rather cowed at this point, but the captains with connections to the nobility, which was way too fucking many of them, were looking either bored, amused or angry. Karkat pressed on anyway.

“This has been the most utterly pathetic display of total fucking ineptitude I have ever seen. I’ve had crews made up of convicts and ex-mutineers that I trusted more than you! This fleet may well be the single worst naval formation that has ever set sail! You can’t be trusted to perform even the most basic tasks of life at sea without me standing over your shoulders like I’m your fucking kindergarten teacher, you haven’t trained your crews, there’s no discipline, your gunnery is so bad that we might better off just trying to ram enemy ships instead, and you all could be replaced with howler monkeys and if anything, we would perform better. With only a few exceptions,” Karkat gestured broadly at Kanaya, Aradia, and Terezi, “you people are all worthless, idiotic jackasses, disgracing the uniform, the nation, the very concept of naval warfare, and quite possibly the fucking species!”

Karkat paused, took a big sip of water, and breathed for a moment. He turned to look at the various noble types, who had been mostly unaffected by his rant, since their connections made them safe from any actual punishment. The only one who seemed to actually care was Princess Feferi, who had an expression reminiscent of a sad puppy. Hey, at least she cared. Karkat forced himself to calm down a little before specifically addressing the nobles.

“Look. I understand that you probably just arranged to get commissions in the Northern Fleet because it was a respectable way to get a job where you didn’t have to do any real work. Nobody expected that the Northern Fleet would ever have to fight a real war, and so no one cared about the state of it. But even if I don’t have the power to hold you to any sort of standards, the enemy won’t care about your social positions. If those had actually been torpedo boats out there earlier, they could have sunk half the fleet in that mess. And if we can’t shape the hell up by the time we have to fight a real battle, we are all going to get killed. I’ve given you the orders and told you what you need to start doing to pull things together. So please, get over yourselves, buckle down, and start acting like sailors of the Alternian Empire.” Karkat paused for a moment to let his words sink in. “You’re dismissed.”

The captains filed out, and Karkat watched them as they went, looking to see if they had taken his speech seriously. For the most part, it appeared that they hadn’t. He sighed. He had seen their type before; dilettantes and spoiled idiots, who had bought a ticket into the navy for the prestige and the romance, and thought war was essentially a traveling society party with their fellow officers, punctuated by occasional exciting battles where they always won and quipped their way fearlessly through the bullets. The only way that they would ever learn to take it seriously was when they had to face the blood and thunder for themselves. Unfortunately, this sorry excuse for a fleet probably wouldn’t survive an encounter with any actual blood or thunder.

“Say, fellows.” Zebruh’s voice echoed from the hallway, at a perfect volume where Karkat could still hear him just fine but he could claim that he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. “You know what the best part about this is? We’re not the ones who have to try and explain this mess to Her Majesty.”

Snickers filtered in from the other noble officers.

“Why, that little-” Nepeta started towards the door.

“Not worth it, Nep.” said Karkat.

She stopped and contented herself with a little snarl in Zebruh’s direction. The smarmy fucker was right, though. Karkat did have to try and find a way to tell the Condesce about this mess.

“Maybe you can try and use this to try and get rid of some of the worst offenders.” Kanaya suggested optimistically.

“Oh, no, she’ll blame me for this, you can bet on it.” Karkat rested his head dejectedly on his hand. “You have to establish your authority, she’ll say. Be more assertive, she’ll say. Never mind that I can’t actually punish any of them, or that she didn’t give me any time to train the sorry collection of conscripts that had been sitting in an ice-locked port for months before we left. No, our glorious fucking Condesce-”

Nepeta gently elbowed him in the shoulder. Karkat looked up to see Princess Feferi standing at attention in front of him.

“Vice Admiral.” she said.

“Your Highness.” Karkat acknowledged her with a nod. What could she want? Was she upset about the berating he had given them? Well, tough; the one bright side of Karkat’s position as the fleet’s nominal commander was that he didn’t have to listen to the nobles’s whining, even if he couldn’t make them listen to him either.

“I was wondering if you might like me to deliver the report about this incident to the Condesce? She would probably take it better coming from me, rather than you.”

Holy fucking shit an actually helpful thing.

“Yes, actually, that would be rather nice. Thank you.” Karkat sighed with relief. At least that would be mitigated.

Feferi turned to Kanaya. “I’m really sorry that we shot at your ship. It was dark and we couldn’t see your flag and all we had been told was that there was enemy action and then you were coming towards us, and I asked my XO what we should do and she said we should fire. I’m really sorry.”

Kanaya blinked a few times. “I suppose that sort of thing can happen, when the fleet is this disorganized. Do try not to do it again, please.”

“Of course! I was leaving the drilling and training up to my subordinates, but I’m starting to think I should take a more active hand in it.”

“That couldn’t hurt.” Karkat agreed.

“Right.” said Feferi. She paused a little awkwardly for a moment. “I should go start working on that report. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with.”

“Will do. Thanks, Your Highness.”

“Please, you can call me Feferi.” She smiled at them, then turned and walked out of the room.

“Well, that was nice of her.” said Kanaya.

It was indeed. At least now Karkat could go back to trying vainly to get the fleet in shape without having to write a report about this mess. 

\------------

The fleet sailed on. Prospit hadn’t declared war or anything yet, but a group of Prospitian cruisers was shadowing them, and the Alternian embassy in Aureton had sent them a message saying that the Prospitian First Fleet was getting ready to sail. Since Prospit had been building up its navy recently, and Alternia had been somewhat neglecting its own in favor of the army and had seen some pretty bad naval casualties lately, the First Fleet stood a fairly good chance of beating the entire Alternian Navy in battle if it had to; the Northern Fleet stood no chance whatsoever. Karkat’s contingency plan for the situation was to run like hell for a neutral port and be interned until they had a chance to try and slip away.

Hopefully they could avoid a war. The main sticking point in the Prospitian press seemed to be that they had a hard time believing that a fleet of professional sailors could actually shoot at a fleet of fishing boats for twenty whole minutes by accident, and to be fair, Karkat still had a bit of a hard time believing it himself. But the Condesce was doing the appropriate bits of diplomacy, and Feferi, in another rather helpful move, had summoned all of her royal charm and training to write a very heartfelt letter to the Prospitian Times, which had apparently been well received.

On the other hand, Prospit hadn’t exactly liked them in the first place, and if it weren’t for the fact that the Northern Fleet’s gunnery had been too lousy to kill very many people in the incident they would probably be at war already. And that meant that Karkat had to come up with some doomed contingency plans just in case. It also meant that he had to have a meeting with Commodore Serket, whose boat was just now pulling up to the _Scythe_ , because she apparently had an idea.

Karkat sighed. Vriska’s nickname among the higher echelons of the fleet was ‘Coinflip’ Serket. This often caused those not in the know to confuse her for her favorite captain and long-term ‘it’s complicated’, Terezi Pyrope, who was fond of theatrically flipping coins for various reasons. But the nickname didn’t have anything to do with her personal habits: it was because any time you sent her to do something, it either went spectacularly well or spectacularly wrong, with no in-between. Assign her a couple of destroyers and tell her to go commerce raiding, and she’d either come back towing an enemy battleship as a prize, or start a war with a neutral country because she’d assumed that those flags just _had_ to be false ones. (Those weren’t hypotheticals, she’d actually done both of those things before.) Since the ability to say ‘fuck it’ and throw a spanner in the works was useful in a war more often than you might think, and she was from the nobility and her cousin was Minister of the Interior, Vriska had been promoted to Commodore and kept around just in case. She had been assigned as the second-in-command of the Northern Fleet on account of being the only one in the navy crazy enough to want the job, and today she was either going to have a brilliant idea, or a ridiculous one. 

The woman in question strode confidently through the door, sat down, and put her feet up on Karkat’s desk. Karkat pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“Commodore Serket, I know that we are currently sailing in the naval equivalent of a herd of drunken sheep being corralled by a couple of sheepdogs with late-stage dementia, but could we nonetheless try to maintain the barest minimum of military decorum?” 

She rolled her eyes at him, but she at least set her feet on the floor. 

“Thank you. Now, what was this idea that you said you had?” 

Vriska grinned and adjusted her eyepatch. “Okay, so. We’re just now coming into the Prospitian Channel, and we’re coming up on the First Fleet’s base at Gold Harbor, right?” 

“Believe me, I am acutely aware.” said Karkat. 

“Right, so, since we can’t beat the First Fleet in a straight fight, and Prospit is most likely going to declare war on us soon over the stupid fishing boats, we need to strike first.” 

Oh, that wasn’t a good start. “Go on.” said Karkat, cautiously. 

“My plan is this.” said Vriska. “I’ll need _Widowmaker_ , a bunch of destroyers, and two or three of the old-ass battleships. The rest of you guys will engage that cruiser squadron shadowing us and make a bunch of smoke and shit so we can slip away undetected. Our group will sail straight to Gold Harbor and catch the First Fleet by surprise before they can leave. While _Widowmaker_ bombards them and the destroyers go into the harbor to sow panic and score what hits they can, we’ll trap them inside by scuttling the older battleships in that spot where the bay narrows and there’s a shallow bit. By the time they clear things out, we’ll be through the channel and home free on the open seas. What do you say, huh?” Vriska finished her presentation, clearly thinking that the merits of her plan were self-evident. 

“No.” Karkat said flatly. 

“What?” said Vriska. 

“No. That’s a terrible plan. Or rather, it’s an okay plan for solving the immediate problem, but it also creates a bunch of new, worse problems. No. I know-” Karkat was cut off when Vriska suddenly stood up and slammed her hands down on the desk. 

“Look, Vantas, there’s a problem here, and I’m trying to solve it, okay! I know that you’re all scared of the Empress yelling at you, and having to get into a real sea battle after you’ve been sitting around counting beans for so long, but this calls for action! You’re just a glorified quartermaster, who’s only here to keep the fleet organized long enough for us to get to the battlefield. That’s why the Condesce put a lowblood in charge. I won the Battle of Ederas! And I’ve got a whole fleet’s worth of spirited captains who are still ready to go even after you screamed at them like a baby over a bunch of meaningless fishing boats. You’re just an administrator, so sit back and let me and the actual fighters do what needs doing.” 

Karkat glared up at her. 

“You’re right, Commodore Serket, I am an administrator. That means that it’s my job to think things through, something that you clearly haven’t done. Even if this circus of a fleet could actually be trusted to pull your plan off without running aground or failing to scuttle themselves properly or whatever the hell, the First Fleet is getting ready to sail. That means that the Prospitians are going to be on alert. Even if you did somehow manage to get to Gold Harbor without getting spotted, it’s a fucking naval base. It has lookouts, and it has a whole lot of guns, more than enough to drive off a little detachment like the one you have in mind.” 

“We can evade a few little shore guns long enough to pull this off!” Vriska protested. “The destroyers are expendable anyway.” 

“And even if your plan worked perfectly,” Karkat continued, ignoring her, “we would still be completely screwed. Because the Second Fleet is near the Inland Sea, in a perfect position to intercept us if we go to war with Prospit, and even if it’s not quite as powerful as the First Fleet, it’s more than capable of blowing us out of the water, especially since we’d be even shorter on ammunition than we already are, and cutting us off from resupply would be child’s play. Our only chance to avoid getting screwed is to not have a war with Prospit, and you want us to go out of our way to start one? I’m not jumping off the cliff just so I can control the fall. I appreciate that you’re being proactive, but we’re not using your plan.” 

Vriska was steaming. “Are you really willing to just sit here hoping things work out instead of going down fighting like an Alternian? I can’t believe you!” 

“Commodore Serket,” Karkat snapped, “we are professional sailors. Our job is to do what we have to do and what we’ve been ordered to do to win the war, not to go running off into whatever battle is most convenient in the pursuit of glorious victory like a bunch of barbarians! We’re having a hard enough time with Skaia as it is; I’m not throwing Prospit into the mix just so you can add another daring victory to your résumé.” 

Vriska had gotten a dark look on her face. “I don’t know why I bothered trying to run it past you.” she muttered. “I guess we’ll see what you think about it afterwards.” She turned and stormed off towards the boat waiting to bring her back to _Widowmaker_. 

Karkat gritted his teeth. Goddamn stupid-ass glory hound nobility. For as long as he’d been in the navy he’d had to deal with them, but this was the worst it had ever been. He felt less like a Vice Admiral and more like a tour guide. For years and years he had seen noble officers shirk their duties, laugh off casualties, and throw away good ships and sailors for the sake of pride and glory, and he was getting real sick of it. And now Vriska looked like she might be seriously considering some kind of mutiny just so she could try and go play war hero again. He had better do something about that. 

Karkat walked out to the bridge, trying to decide which cruiser other than the _Rainbow_ was the least pathetic of the bunch. Captain Xigisi had his head in the clouds a lot, but at least he wasn’t actively stupid or malicious. He would have to do. 

“Captain Nitram.” said Karkat as he stepped onto the bridge. 

“Sir.” 

“Signal _Harpoon_ to take the lead of the fleet, and move us so we’re between _Widowmaker_ and the Prospitian coastline.” 

“Uh, yes, sir.” 

“Signal _Death’s Head_ and _Rainbow_ to join us. Hell, get _Trident_ too. And if _Widowmaker_ tries to move out of formation- no, wait, we’d just miss and blow off the bridge or something. Tell _Death’s Head_ to put a shot across _Widowmaker_ ’s bows if it tries to leave the formation.” 

“Right away, sir.” 

Hopefully that would dissuade Vriska from trying anything stupid. Karkat pulled out a piece of paper and wrote out a personal note to have sent to Captain Pyrope. 

‘Please try to dissuade your Commodore from trying anything stupid.’ it read. He grabbed an ensign to deliver it, then went out to drill _Scythe_ ’s damage control teams while he was waiting to hear back about things. 

\-------------- 

Karkat watched from the deck of the _Scythe_ as his sailors loaded more coal into her hold, and was rather relieved that they got to do it at anchor for once. 

Prospit, after much deliberation (and probably some serious looks at the size of the army Alternia could deploy against Prospit’s land-based allies) had decided not to declare war, on the condition that the Northern Fleet stop at Port Hatter so that some of the officers who were responsible for the incident could face a tribunal. Karkat, who had been hoping to sweet talk his way into a stop there anyways, had readily agreed. The Prospitian fleet had shadowed them the whole way, though they’d only kept a half-dozen battleships in engagement range. Apparently Admiral Peregrine didn’t think that any more than that was necessary to beat the whole Northern Fleet. Karkat wished he could say with any confidence that she was wrong. 

Unfortunately, he couldn’t disembark most of his captains, who hadn’t been on their bridges at the moment the firing started, which meant that he still had to deal with just as many jackass nobles as before, which was starting to look potentially dangerous with the way Vriska was carrying on. Karkat had gotten a message back from Captain Pyrope: ‘I’ll try, but no promises.’ 

Vriska hadn’t tried anything once Karkat had put his most trusted ships between her and her plan, but she had been going from ship to ship quite a bit lately, and having meetings with some of the more obnoxious captains. Nepeta was currently on board the _Widowmaker_ , having slipped on board incognito to see what Vriska was up to. 

Karkat had also gotten a message from the Condesce, letting him know that something worthwhile had better come of sending the fleet in the end, or else. Of course, Karkat had already known that, so it wasn’t particularly disturbing. It also didn’t change the fact that it would take a miracle for anything worthwhile to come out of this mess. 

In between drilling the sailors on _Scythe_ and trying with little success to get the other ships in the fleet to follow his lead, Karkat was trying to plan a strategy for when they did make it out to fight the Skaians. He was mulling over the idea of sending out some of the oldest ships as a decoy to let the rest of the fleet sprint past and link up with the remaining forces in Point Violet, when Nepeta returned, fuming. 

“The nerve of her!” she said. 

“Dare I ask?” 

“She’s trying to talk some of the other captains into only taking orders from her so she can steal operational command for herself. And the stuff she’s saying to talk them into it, gah, I mean…” 

Nepeta trailed off, snatched a spare pair of binoculars off of the table, and hurled them over the side of the ship with a frustrated scream. As they splashed down, she turned back to Karkat. 

“Wow, that was satisfying. No wonder you’re always doing it.” 

“I know, right?” said Karkat. “Anyway, are any of the captains going along with her?” 

“Not really. A lot of them seem to like her better than you, but she’s being defeated by the same thing that we are; the nobles all just want to sit around letting their subordinates do all the work, and they’re not really too invested in the outcome of the battle. And of course, none of them know enough about war at sea to understand how serious of a situation we’re in.” 

“Naturally. Fucking jackasses. Worse than Serket.” At least Vriska was an actual fighter. That eyepatch of hers wasn’t for show. 

“Right, but it was the things she was saying about you that really got me upset.” Nepeta snarled a little. “She kept calling you a coward! After all the times I’ve had to drag you by your collar out of the thick of things. And after you spent fifteen minutes picking through burning wreckage in a flooding passage next to a boiler that could explode at any moment just in case there was still someone alive down there, and saved my life!” 

“You know,” said Karkat, “after all the times you’ve bailed me out over the years, I reckon we’re more than even for that.” 

“First time’s always special, sir. Anyhow, she also kept talking like she won the Battle of Ederas all by herself, and about how you got your fleet wrecked on the Twelfth of June action, like it wasn’t her fault that the battle had to be fought in the first place, and a bunch of other nonsense about her record.” 

“Whatever.” If Karkat got upset every time Vriska Serket tried to exaggerate her war record, he would die of a stress aneurysm. 

“What are you going to do about her?” Nepeta asked. 

What _was_ he going to do about her? Wait. Oh, he had an idea. 

“Ask her to swing by the _Scythe_. I want to talk to her.” 

An hour later, Vriska was standing in front of his desk again. 

“What did you want, Vantas?” she asked. 

Karkat let some of his exhaustion about everything creep into his voice. “I need you to help me with something.” 

“Oh?” Vriska leaned forward eagerly. “What might that be?” 

Got her. 

Karkat sighed theatrically. “I’ve come to the realization that our fleet isn’t strong enough to beat the Skaians.” 

“But our numbers are-” 

“Look at them, Commodore.” Karkat shook his head. “The ships are a wreck, the men are a joke, and the captains don’t have the mettle for any real action.” Vriska would probably be more willing to buy that line after she hadn’t gotten any support for her little coup. 

“I suppose you’re right.” said Vriska. “But what do you want me to do about it?” 

“I need you to get us some reinforcements.” 

“But don’t we already have the whole Northern Fleet?” Vriska asked. 

That was true; they had every ship that was worth sending and quite a few that weren’t, and he was trying to get Vriska out of his hair by sending her on a wild goose chase. But Karkat had a line in mind. 

“From the north, yes, but not the Western Fleet. They’ve got more modern ships, they just don’t want to let anyone else use them. And if anyone can talk them into giving some of them up, it’s the Hero of Ederas. You’re the only one who can bail us out.” 

Play along with her perception of you; check. Flatter her; check. Appeal to her need to be the big hero; check. It was just like when you had to try and talk a noble officer out of something stupid back in the old days, except Karkat technically outranked her. 

Vriska thought for a moment, then nodded. “All right, Vantas. I’ll take the train back to Alternia and start rounding up some more ships.” 

“Thank you.” said Karkat, relieved (though probably not for the reason Vriska thought he was). “Every ship counts.” 

“No worries, I’ll get a whole bunch, and we’ll crush those Skaians!” Vriska saluted jauntily and strode purposefully out the door. 

And that was that. Between that and Prospit not declaring war, all of the problems that had sprung up since they started sailing were gone. (Well, except the ammo shortage. They’d have to stop and wait for a resupply at some point.) Now they only had to deal with all of the problems that had existed before they had set out in the first place. 

The next day, with Vriska gone via train, the fleet set out again, about to start the long and unpleasant leg of their journey around the southern continent. Karkat had obtained a detailed chart of the harbor and pointedly given it to Captain Nitram, so there was no running aground this time at least. 

Karkat watched the rest of the ships move out and waited for something to go wrong. Even as he looked, _Talon_ sailed too close to a wall, and scraped off her davits, the ship’s longboat tumbling overboard and sinking. A cruiser jerked awkwardly as it pulled up its anchor, then started signalling them. 

“Uh, sir, _Bloodspray_ signals that they think they accidentally cut Port Hatter’s undersea telegraph wire, sir.” said Tavros. 

“Of course they did.” Karkat sighed. 

At least neither of those things would cause any delays. 

A depressingly short time later, the next problem cropped up. 

“Ah, sir, we seem to have lost contact with the _Sea Serpent_.” Tavros reported. 

“God fucking damn it, Eridan.” Karkat kicked a wall. Hopefully he would make his way back soon. It was probably too much to hope that the ship had just sunk. 

Two and a half days later, _Sea Serpent_ finally showed up again. Karkat had it pull up right alongside _Scythe_ , and met Eridan at the rail, smiling serenely. 

“Good evening, Captain Ampora.” he called across the gap between the ships. “Did you have a nice trip?” 

“Yeah, sorry about that, there was a tricky current for a bit there, and the spray was kicking up, you know how it is.” Eridan said hurriedly. “But listen, we need to be on alert, I ran into a problem out there.” 

“Uh-huh. Go on.” Karkat was still smiling serenely. 

“We ran across a group of three Skaian torpedo boats! They ran off after we took a few shots at them, but there could be more. We have to get the fleet ready.” 

“Gee, that’s funny.” said Karkat. “You see, I got a report this morning. It was about what was apparently a stray Alternian cruiser that was making an absolute fool of itself. Not only was it lost, it apparently had a hard time with ship recognition, since it decided that an Ohtragan merchantman, a Mustelian yacht, and a Cherubic fishing boat were threatening enough to fire over three hundred shells at.” 

“Ah, well…” stammered Eridan. 

“Fortunately, the ship’s guns were apparently all crewed by near-sighted baboons with eye infections, since despite firing all of those shells, the ship didn’t actually hit anything. As such, there was no major diplomatic incident this time around. Still, it’s impressive. Between you and the rest of the fleet, we’ve nearly started a war with every major naval power on the continent.” Karkat paused, his smile now rather strained. 

“In the interest of fairness, Captain Ampora, I’ll give you a moment here. Please, if you can, explain yourself.” 

There was a pause, before Eridan spoke up sullenly. 

“Well, they could’ve been torpedo boats in disguise.” 

Karkat’s binoculars flew across the gap, bounced off of Eridan’s nose, and fell into the sea while Eridan flailed and fell backwards. 

The fleet kept sailing. Karkat had considered tethering _Sea Serpent_ to another ship, but settled for making it sail directly behind _Scythe_. 

Here we come, Skaia. Hope you’re ready to face the glorious fleet. 

\------------------- 

Admiral Jade Harley was rather glad to have the chance to have a nice little brunch with her friends. Well, technically, it was something of a meeting with her senior officers; Commodore John Egbert was her second in command and the commander of her torpedo boat flotilla, Captain Dave Strider commanded _Emerald_ , the state-of-the-art battleship serving as Jade’s flagship, and Colonel Rose Lalonde was Jade’s liaison with Intelligence and also basically her chief of staff. But still; friend brunch. Jade had gone out of her way to make the amusingly shaped pancakes herself. 

The war was going as well as could be expected. Alternia’s navy was in shambles, and the critical base at Point Violet was besieged by land and sea. It was only a matter of time before the army’s push captured the hills overlooking the harbor, and their artillery compelled a surrender. The Alternian fleet that was left in Eastcrown was battered and outgunned, and couldn’t hope to achieve anything meaningful without reinforcements. 

But there had been rumors lately that those reinforcements might be on their way. Jade had hoped that they could bring the war to a conclusion without having to fight any more major battles, but apparently Alternia wanted to be stubborn about things. 

Jade listened happily for a while as John and Dave argued amicably over the merits of a play they had seen shortly before the fleet had set off, and was impressed with Dave’s ability to hold a normal conversation while he and Jade were engaged in an epic game of footsie under the table. Rose was looking through a newspaper and inserting her own observations about the play into John and Dave’s argument. 

One of Rose’s subordinates briefly popped into the room to hand her a missive. Rose quickly read it, then looked up at the rest of them. 

“It’s confirmed.” she said. “Another Alternian fleet is making its way towards us. Prospit’s not letting them use the Inland Sea canals, so it’ll be awhile before they get here, but they’re coming.” 

“Details?” Jade asked, as she stopped pinning Dave’s ankle to a chair leg so she could focus. 

“It’s apparently a rather large fleet; eleven battleships, nineteen cruisers, and appropriate escorts.” said Rose. 

“Holy shit.” said Dave. 

“However,” Rose continued, “many of the ships are apparently rather aged, and both Prospitian naval officers and our own attachés report serious reservations about the fleet’s readiness for war. The most modern capital ships in their fleet are four _Trident_ -class battleships, but- well, I have the full report here.” 

“Well, that’s not so bad.” said Jade. “Especially with the logistical problems they’re sure to have getting the fleet all the way out here.” 

She looked over the full list of ships for a minute. 

“Yes, we definitely still have the advantage. A lot of these Alternian vessels are so old that they may as well have left them at home. Maybe if they could link up with Point Violet or Eastcrown they could assemble a worthwhile fighting force, but we’ll have all the time in the world to intercept them at Surro. Do we know who’s in command of the fleet?” 

Rose looked through the report again. “Vice Admiral Karkat Vantas.” 

“Oh.” said Jade. “Well, that’s not good. I’d have thought they’d send another noble or something.” 

“Hey, Vantas got promoted.” John observed off-handedly. 

Jade sighed. “I suppose it was too much to hope we wouldn’t face any good admirals.” 

Admiral Dualscar had been in command of most of the best ships of the Alternian Navy by virtue of politics and social status rather than any actual merit, and had consequently lost most of them rather easily. Jade’s diversionary squadron and her maneuvering had tricked him into thinking her fleet was both larger than it was and surrounding him, and his flight towards a feigned gap in her lines had led him right into an ambush by John’s torpedo boats, while Jade’s fleet hammered his destroyers to leave his larger ships vulnerable. After the fact, Jade had beaten two more decent Alternian admirals; poor Vice Admiral Sezyat had tried to lead a doomed breakout from Point Violet on orders from on high and was still laid up in a hospital for it, and Vice Admiral Moolah had tried to lead a fleet out of Eastcrown to relieve Point Violet, but had been outmaneuvered, had her ‘T’ crossed, and was still MIA after a salvo from Emerald had blown up her flagship’s ammunition stores. 

Now Alternia’s worst fleet was coming to face them, but under the command of its best admiral, a man who had frequently salvaged bad situations using underpowered forces. They would have to be on their toes to fight him. 

“Let’s get some more drills done.” said Jade. “I want this fleet to be able to shoot accurately and sail properly in its sleep if it has to, and we’ve got plenty of time to make sure we’re well-oiled. Send a message home to see if they can spare any more ships, just in case.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” Dave gave her a half-assed salute, kissed her on the cheek, and got up to go to the bridge. 

Alternia was still coming after them, but they would be ready. Oh, boy, would they be ready. 

\----------------- 

Karkat watched the approaching storm on the horizon, and hoped that his fleet would make it through. You’d think that it wouldn’t be a huge worry for a modern fleet, but with this lot, anything could happen. 

The situation of the Northern Fleet had not particularly improved as their voyage continued. Karkat continued ordering training and drills, and other officers mostly just did a few while he was looking and then stopped bothering as soon as he looked away. On the bright side, some of the enlisted men were inspired to start doing some stuff on their own time, though it was rather ad hoc and not very useful. Of course, gunnery practice, the most desperately needed training, was still impossible due to the shortage of ammunition, so that sucked. 

Karkat could at least make sure the men on _Scythe_ were trained properly in everything else. And in another slight piece of good news, _Trident_ was doing better as well. 

Karkat had been talking more with Princess Feferi lately, and had found her to actually be rather charming; she was amicable, kind, talkative, and wasn’t at all inclined to stand on ceremony despite being an actual princess. It turned out that she had actually made a study of naval warfare when she had found out she was going to be on this voyage, and having learned just enough to know how little she knew, had mostly left actual command on _Trident_ to her XO. In a better fleet, that might well have been a good idea, but Commander Namaaq’s skills were as lacking as most of the officers in the Northern Fleet, so it hadn’t gone particularly well up to this point. Feferi had taken full command for herself after the debacle with the fishing boats, and Karkat had sent Nepeta over a number of times to help her train her crew and show her the ropes. 

This had led to _Trident_ shaping the hell up rather quickly; Feferi was very well-liked by her crew, and Nepeta was an excellent officer. It had also led to Nepeta getting an enormous crush on Feferi, which Karkat hadn’t anticipated, but hey, it was doing wonders for Nepeta’s spirits. He had made sure to send her over to help out more often, and Kanaya had politely offered Nepeta some tips on talking to royalty (not that it mattered with Princess “oh, you can just call me Feferi”). 

Unfortunately, this being the Northern Fleet, that was about the extent of the good news. They were finally starting to get into properly tropical waters, which meant that the ships that had been designed for arctic conditions, i.e., all of them, were miserably hot. The heat was causing all sorts of technical problems, and made everyone even less inclined to do anything useful than they were before. The men were disgruntled and morale was mostly shot. Several ships had sprung leaks and had to be hastily patched up. Captain Codakk had shoved a petty officer over the side for spilling coffee on him and tried to just keep sailing without picking her up (Captain Megido had spotted her, fortunately). 

Karkat had tried to talk to Zebruh after that, but had just gotten a signet ring waved around in his face. He still couldn’t try to enforce any discipline on anyone from the nobility without them calling home to the capital, which would lead to him being relieved of duty for being too upsetting to the social order. At least he could yell at them all he liked; the Condesce didn’t care about mere yelling. (The occasional hurled object was fine too, since the Condesce thought people who complained that sort of thing were, quote, ‘little bitches’, unquote.) 

At this point, Karkat had to very definitively admit that the nobles in his fleet treated a Vice Admiral’s uniform with about the same reverence as a museum tour guide’s, if the guy wearing it didn’t have the right blood color. It was infuriating. Was this what the navy had come to? He had had noble captains serving under him before, in the Dersite Wars. They hadn’t respected him as a person, for the most part, but they had at least seen enough real service to respect the rank, and its signal that the higher-ups trusted its bearer to make decisions. Had the navy really degraded this badly while he had been stuck managing supplies? 

Of course it had, everything else in Alternia had. The Condesce had been devolving more and more power to the nobility to crack down on revolutionary movements, and they had abused the hell out of it, while pathetically infighting for favor and causing all sorts of trouble for ordinary people. Meanwhile, the Condesce lounged on her gilded throne, secured by her personal military units full of brainwashed fanatics, and sent the rest of her military out to die for pride and prestige and petty feuds. 

Once upon a time, Karkat had been proud to fight for Alternia. But that part of his heart that swelled at the strains of Alternia’s anthem or the flutter of her flag had long been suffocating within him, and this voyage might have finally pressed a pillow over its face. How many random farmers and urchins would die under Skaian guns while the nobles fled in lifeboats? 

But duty was duty, and he must soldier on. It wasn’t like you were really allowed to leave the military in Alternia, anyway. 

Karkat walked out onto the observation deck to clear his head, and watched the lightning flicker in the onrushing black clouds. Shit, hopefully none of his ships would get blown up by lightning. It was a disturbingly likely possibility, what with the problem they were having with coal dust. 

The fleet had recently taken on more coal, which had gone as well as usual. But since they weren’t going to have a chance to resupply until they finished going around the southern continent, they had to take on a double load. Naturally, there wasn’t enough room in the holds for that, and so coal was stored wherever they could fit it; decks, cabins, closets, passages. This resulted in coal dust getting everywhere. 

Since coal dust was dirty, bad for your lungs, and, you know, _explosively flammable_ , Karkat had given orders to store the coal in sealed off areas wherever possible, cover it in tarps, and triple the cleaning regimens. About one out of four ships had actually implemented his orders in full; the rest had slacked off on the cleaning to various degrees. You could tell which ones were slacking by the number of crew members who had started coughing up black gunk when the coal dust started combining with the tropical humidity. 

And now they had a storm coming, complete with lightning, while a number of their ships were still coal-dust bombs. Great. On the bright side, maybe it would wash off some of the mess. 

They sailed on into the storm. _Rapier_ , one of the older cruisers, was indeed set on fire by lightning, and her skipper, Captain Erdehn, had delayed the response because she wanted to paint a picture of the fire. A destroyer had tried to sail right into a swell to clean off the coal dust and nearly capsized. Another destroyer had actually sunk when some poorly repaired leaks burst open, and the damage control team flooded too many compartments trying to balance the ship’s list. Conscript sailors who had no idea what to do in a storm were getting swept off the decks left and right. It was a mess. 

Karkat staggered back onto _Scythe_ ’s bridge, soaking wet from helping pull a few sailors out of the sea. 

“Get me a roll call of the fleet.” he snapped at Tavros. 

“Yes, sir.” Tavros gave the order to his signals officer, and the reports came rolling in. Karkat leaned against the wall to catch his breath, and listened to the all-clear reports come rolling in. 

_"Sunray_ is all clear, _Rainbow_ is all clear, _Sea Serpent_ , uh, _Sea Serpent_ sends ‘Do you see torpedo boats?’, sir.” 

“Damn it, not again! Signal the fleet not to-” 

Karkat was cut off when the storm’s thunder was joined by the thunder of his fleet’s guns firing in panic, and a crash that sounded suspiciously like somebody hitting a fellow ship by accident again. 

The shells flying into the ocean were joined by yet another pair of binoculars, and Karkat’s scream of frustration briefly rivaled even the fury of the storm. 

\----------------- 

After making it through the storm and rounding the tip of the southern continent, it was finally time for the fleet to make another stop. Between the the various torpedo boat panics they had suffered, they no longer had enough ammunition to fight even a brief engagement with the Skaian fleet, so they were going to have to hole up for awhile, as Alternia’s bureaucracy stumbled its way into buying up more shells and having them sent to the fleet by third parties. 

Fortunately, the Mustelians had agreed to let them hang around at their colony of Port Ermine while they waited. Unfortunately, Port Ermine was very misleadingly named. There weren’t actually any docks or facilities that could handle anything bigger than a little civilian boat, just a large, shallow harbor with a decent sized town attached. This meant that the fleet was reduced to sitting around at anchor, killing time. 

Karkat had gone to a meeting of his captains, ordered them to avoid letting anyone go ashore so as to avoid outbreaks of tropical diseases, walked back to his quarters, and then woke up the next afternoon in sickbay, feeling comprehensively like shit. 

He tried to say something, but only managed an “urrrgh.” 

“Oh, good, you’re awake.” said Nepeta. “I was getting worried.” 

“What happened?” Karkat managed. 

“You don’t remember? You passed out on the bridge this morning. Some kind of tropical fever.” 

Karkat didn’t remember that, actually. Probably a bad sign. 

“I thought I ordered no one to go ashore, so we could avoid this sort of thing.” Karkat said. 

“Ah, well, about that.” said Nepeta. “It turns out that a bunch of the officers had already started slipping ashore to buy drugs and such by the time you gave that order. You probably got it from one of them at that meeting last night.” 

“Of course I did.” Karkat tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. Fuck, he was tired. 

“Any orders, sir?” Nepeta asked. “The medics say you might be here for a while.” 

“Try to get people to do more training, if you can. I know it’s probably a losing cause.” Karkat sighed. “If I die, scuttle the _Sea Serpent_ with Eridan and Zebruh chained to the anchor.” 

Nepeta cocked her head in thought. “Would that actually kill Eridan?” 

“He’ll starve eventually.” 

Nepeta giggled a little. “Very good. Anything else?” 

“Yes, actually. My arms feel like overcooked pasta. Could you do something violent to some binoculars for me? I think it’s bad luck if we don’t.” 

“Way ahead of you, sir.” Nepeta pulled out a pair of binoculars, snapped them in half like they were made of balsa wood, and hurled the pieces out the nearest window with a yell. 

Karkat smiled. “I feel better already. Thanks.” 

“No problem.” said Nepeta. “Get better soon, Karkat. We’re enough of a mess with you active.” 

“Don’t remind me. But I’ll do my best.” 

Nepeta smiled at him and left the room, and Karkat settled down to get some rest and try to feel better. 

\------------------ 

Day after day passed in a haze of exhaustion, fever, and bad news. Nepeta dutifully kept coming in to make reports, and they were never pretty. They were stuck waiting for supplies, tropical diseases were starting to run rampant, the ships were still miserably hot. Every time Nepeta came in with a report there was at least one bit of stupid nonsense happening. 

“A dozen men are in sickbay,” she reported one day, “because the cigarettes that they went ashore to buy turned out to have opium in them by accident.” 

“By accident?” Karkat raised an eyebrow. 

“Well, so they say, at least.” Nepeta shrugged. 

“At least they learned their lesson. Remind everyone to be careful.” 

Another day, Nepeta had an even more ridiculous report. “We’ve been having trouble with some of the officers’s exotic pets.” 

“Wait.” Karkat said, puzzled. “Why should that be a problem? It’s not that hard to have a dog or something on board, and it’s probably good for morale. Unless… what kinds of pets are we talking about here?” 

“Well, Captain Ampora’s crocodile mauled an ensign, and no one can figure out how to get the poisonous snake that Captain Carmia picked up out of the forward gun turret without getting bitten.” 

“Of course. Tell people to only grab pets that can’t kill people when they’re irritated.” 

The next day, Kanaya walked into sickbay carrying a cage. 

“Hello, Karkat.” she said. “How are you feeling?” 

“Better, actually.” Karkat replied. “I actually tried to get out of bed earlier, but I fell and hit my head a bit. Still, sitting up is easy now, and I had the energy to swear about Eridan for a whole minute when I heard that he’s not getting rid of the crocodile.” 

“I’m delighted to hear it.” said Kanaya. “I got you something.” Kanaya pulled the cover off the cage to reveal a gray parrot. “One of the other officers picked her up, but wanted to get rid of her for swearing at him when she was insufficiently fed. I thought of you.” 

Karkat picked a crumb off of his half-eaten lunch and flicked it at the bird; it missed and landed in the bottom of the cage. 

“Piece of shit!” the bird squawked happily as it clambered off of it’s perch to retrieve the morsel. 

“Oh, I think we’re going to get along just fine.” said Karkat. “I’ll name her Crabby. Thanks, Kanaya. How have you been?” 

“As well as can be expected.” she remarked ruefully. “The sooner our ammunition resupplies get here, the better. Things are getting rough out there. I think some of the men are starting to lose their grip on sanity a bit.” 

“Yeah, I can’t blame them.” Karkat groused. “Any news from home?” 

Kanaya paused. “The Empress has decreed a return of the old laws about peasant migrations.” she said carefully. 

“She what? But that’s basically bringing back serfdom, what with the labor requirements from the other year and the new powers over land use decisions that she gave the nobles at the last conference. How on earth can she expect to keep up the modernization program like this?” 

Karkat was incredulous. Just about every decent thing that had happened in Alternia in his life had been a result of the Condesce stripping some power away from the nobles in order to modernize the country and fight the Dersite Wars and other various conflicts and projects. Now they were going back to the old days? 

“The Condesce retains the power to compel the nobility to assign her workers and soldiers as she requires, and she’s also instituted a draft to get conscripts for the military.” Kanaya hesitated. “There is talk of establishing maximum ranks based on caste, for officers.” 

Karkat sat back, stunned. “So that’s it, then. Even after seeing how badly the nobles fought and how well the lowbloods fought in the wars, she’s just going right back to the old days now that she’s got her damn modernization done.” 

“So it seems.” Kanaya said sadly. “I had feared as much. The news has done little to help anyone’s morale around here, unsurprisingly.” 

There were a lot of lowbloods in the Alternian military, even considering how large of a proportion of the population they were. For the last thirty years or so, Alternia had been in dire enough need of a good army and navy, and modernization in general, that the Condesce had torn down some of the old noble power structures that hampered governance, and made joining the military something that a lowblood could actually expect a reward from, if they did well. She’d even made officer training and promotion partially merit-based, in order to make sure there were enough decent officers, which was how Karkat and Nepeta and Aradia and a whole bunch of others had managed to attend the naval academy. Volunteers had flocked to the Alternian banner, and for the first time in a while there were large numbers of genuine matriots among the lower classes. 

And now the Condesce was throwing it all away, because she had gotten her empire to the point where she could let the nobility control the general population for her, while still controlling them and having the military she wanted. 

Karkat had hoped that the way the lowbloods had fought for Alternia would convince the Condesce to let her reforms stand for the good of the country. He probably should have known better. 

“I guess all we can do is try and win this battle, and hope that maybe she’ll reconsider or something.” said Karkat. 

“I guess.” Kanaya said doubtfully. 

“I mean, I can’t think of anything else we can do to help, can you?” 

Kanaya thought for a moment. “No, but I will keep thinking.” 

“Me too.” 

\--------------- 

A few days later, Karkat was finally well enough to get up and move around. Crabby, who had been learning an astonishing number of curse words in a short period of time, had taken to perching on his shoulder when she wasn’t fluttering around the room. It was a pity that Karkat didn’t have an eyepatch like Vriska, or he could have been a sort of pirate admiral. 

“Hey, you’re up!” said Nepeta as she walked in the room. 

“Yes, I am. I think I’m going to go ahead and stay standing up for a week straight, actually.” Karkat paused. Nepeta had perked up a bit when she had come in and seen him, but now she was looking kind of down. 

“Is something wrong?” Karkat asked. 

“We just got a report.” Nepeta answered. “Point Violet surrendered to the Skaians two days ago.” 

Karkat sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. 

“Well, fuck.” he said, woodenly. 

“Fuck!” echoed the parrot. 

Two hours later, Karkat was in a cabin with Kanaya, Aradia, and Terezi, looking over a map of the Sea of Lowas and trying to come up with a plan. 

“We could try to have what’s left of the fleet at Eastcrown sail out and meet us?” Kanaya suggested. 

“It would be a nightmare to coordinate that.” Karkat pointed out. 

“And if either group got caught by the Skaians while it was by itself, it would be a disaster.” Aradia said cheerfully. 

“We could try something unconventional to win the war.” said Terezi. “Skaia’s capital is a port, right? What are their defenses like?” 

“Just before the war started, they were showing off their new batteries of 13.5-inch guns, not to mention the mines, and all of the buoys and lines they have set up to pre-sight every inch of the bay, and the artificial island in the middle of the harbor that’s essentially just an armor-plated cube of extra thick concrete with cannons stuck on it.” Karkat sighed. 

“So that’s a no, then.” said Terezi. “Is there any other way to get to Eastcrown without having to go through the Surro Strait?” Terezi was good at laying out the problem in simple terms like that. 

“Well, we could try sailing through the Skaian archipelago, where we would be spotted almost immediately, harried by artillery and small units the whole way, and the Skaian fleet would definitely still be able to intercept us, in their home waters no less. Or we could try sailing around the eastern edge of Skaian territory, which. Hm. That might actually work.” 

“It’s a bit of a long trip, isn’t it?” said Aradia. 

“Yeah, and we would have to do the double coal thing again, which would be a problem. There’s pretty good odds that we’d still be spotted and intercepted, but the Skaians would have to sail a ways to catch us, so the fight would be more even. Plus, we’d be close enough to Eastcrown that coordinating with them might work out after all. It’s worth a shot.” said Karkat. 

“Better than just sailing into the Surro Strait and right into their guns, at least.” Terezi agreed. 

“We could always just wait for a fog and then sail right into them, and hope to get lucky in the melee.” Aradia said. “We do have a numerical advantage, even if our ships aren’t as good.” 

“Unfortunately, it isn’t just our ships that aren’t as good.” said Kanaya. 

“What she said.” Karkat agreed. “Also, our numbers advantage might not be as good as we might like by the time we get out there. The ships that were left in Point Violet were sunk or scuttled, but the harbor there is shallow, and the Skaians might very well have some of them raised by the time we get there.” 

There was a pause. 

“Man, we’re kind of fucked, huh?” said Aradia. 

“Kind of, yes. At least we get to watch a bunch of jackass nobles go down with us.” Karkat shook his head. “The empire’s really going downhill.” 

Aradia and Kanaya nodded. Terezi sighed. 

“You would think that the Condesce would have kept some of the reforms just for the sake of practicality.” she said. “My old legislacerator colleagues were sure to report to her extensively on how much better things were running. But that’s the empire, I guess.” 

The rest of them murmured their agreement. ‘That’s the empire’ was a very old saying in Alternia. 

“Well, I had best be going.” said Terezi. “I have some mail to catch up on.” 

“Yeah, I’ve got stuff to catch up on now that i’m mobile again.” said Karkat. “At least we have a plan now. Hopefully it survives whatever nonsense this fleet cooks up next." 

\----------------- 

The next nonsense came the next day, while Karkat and Nepeta watched sailors at work aboard _Scythe_. The sailors were disorganized and disarrayed from the heat and the low morale, but they were still more professional than they had been when the voyage had started, so Karkat was counting that as a win. Between his efforts on _Scythe_ and Nepeta and Feferi’s efforts on _Trident_ , the Northern Fleet now had an entire five ships that could be trusted to perform alright in battle (except for gunnery, since they still hadn’t had any chances to practice). 

Speaking of Feferi and Nepeta, Nepeta’s crush on the princess had only gotten stronger, since Feferi had been trying very hard to keep everyone’s spirits up while they were becalmed and waiting for ammunition, and even Karkat couldn’t help but find her optimism endearing. Nepeta was actually elaborating on the subject as they walked up the deck. 

“-and she’s always so nice, and she’s so delightful to talk to, and she’s such a good listener, and she has just the cutest laugh you’ve ever heard and, ah.” Nepeta trailed off with a wistful sigh. 

“Wow, you’re gushing about her laugh. You’re gone.” said Karkat. “You should just go for it already.” 

“But Karkat,” said Nepeta, “she’s a princess! She’s not really in my league.” 

“The hell she isn’t. You’re a dashing naval captain, if you two dated it would be right out of a romance novel.” 

“I’m dashing?” 

“You’ve got the uniform, complete with the medals for bravery, you go rushing cheerfully into danger when the need arises, and you even bother to carry that-” Karkat gestured at the sabre that was mostly meant for dress uniforms but was nonetheless belted at Nepeta’s hip, “around with you. You could have walked right off of the cover of a pulp romance.” 

“Oh. I guess you’re right, but- hey, what’s that?” Nepeta pointed towards the bow. 

“Hey, don’t try to change the subject- wait, what is that?” 

A big purpleblood man was wandering up the deck towards them, with a slightly glazed-over look in his eyes and a small cadre of similarly impaired-looking followers. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, which wasn’t as weird as it could have been considering the weather, but was still kind of weird considering that the rest of his uniform was that of a lieutenant commander. The shirtless guy walked up to the two of them. 

“Hey.” he said. 

“Can I help you, ah, what’s your name?” Karkat asked. 

“Gamzee Makara, bro.” Gamzee turned to Nepeta. “Do you fear death?” he asked. 

“Uh, no?” Nepeta answered, puzzled. 

Gamzee shook his head and turned to Karkat. “Do you fear death?” 

“I’m not exactly looking forward to it.” Karkat said wryly. 

“Eyyyy!” Gamzee looked rather pleased. “You made a joke! You understand it, how it’s all a joke in the end, and all we can do is laugh.” 

“Sure.” said Karkat, trying to humor the very large and slightly unhinged guy. 

“Keep spreading the message, man.” said Gamzee. He and his entourage wandered on, and Karkat heard him posing his question to a few more sailors as he went. 

“Well, that was weird.” said Nepeta. 

“The heat gets to people.” said Karkat. “Have somebody keep an eye on that guy.” 

Never a dull moment in the Northern Fleet. No matter how much you might wish for one. 

\-------------- 

Even later (for God’s sake, when was their damn ammunition going to show up so they could leave?), Karkat, Crabby perched on his shoulder, looked around at the state of their ships as a boat rowed him over to the _Sea Serpent_ , where Eridan had invited him to a funeral of some sort. (He had considered ignoring it, but Eridan could get insufferably huffy when snubbed, and it was probably a good idea to check on him.) The ships they passed were looking more than a little dilapidated, but none of them seemed to be in danger of actually sinking, which would have to do. 

A shark swam near their boat, and a bunch of sailors jumped with alarm. Karkat rolled his eyes. 

“Just don’t fall out and you’ll be fine.” he told them. “Besides, those are mako sharks. They won’t attack you unless you provoke them.” The sailors seemed to calm down a bit after that. Hey, they had actually listened to him. 

There had been a lot of sharks swimming around lately, because the refrigerators on one of the supply ships had failed and a truly ludicrous amount of rotting meat had to be thrown overboard. The more experienced sailors (the few that there were) weren’t really bothered, but many of the conscripts from inland apparently found sharks to be terrifying. Yet another thing to add to the bad mood in the fleet. There had been ships where people just refused to get out of bed in the morning. 

The boat reached the _Sea Serpent_ , and Karkat climbed up the ladder. 

Eridan was waiting at the top. “Hey, glad you made it over, Karkat.” he said, extending a hand to help him on board. 

Karkat ignored him and pulled himself up by the railing. “So, who is this funeral for?” 

“For Ahab, of course.” 

“Ahab?” That was an odd name for an Alternian. 

“My poor crocodile. Choked on a ham bone.” Eridan shook his head sadly. 

“You’re having a funeral for your pet crocodile?” Karkat glared at Eridan. “Really?” 

“Hey, Ahab was special to the ship, and when you have a loss, you have to commemorate it, you know?” 

“Didn’t six of your crew die of typhoid?” 

“Oh, we’ve got more of them.” Eridan waved it off. 

A lieutenant whose expression hovered in the liminal space between bored and annoyed started the ‘service’. The various sailors standing around watched to make sure Eridan wasn’t looking at them, then immediately started quietly joking around, apparently rather relieved that Ahab had died before he could maul anyone else. 

“I also invited you over because I wanted to talk to you too, you know.” said Eridan, as the farcical ceremony went on. 

“About?” said Karkat, tone a little clipped. 

“Well, I was starting to worry you might not particularly like me anymore.” 

“Oh for the love of…” Karkat’s palm smacked into his face. Crabby squawked aggressively at Eridan. 

“I mean, you yelled at me a bunch, and threw those binoculars at me, and I just wanted to make sure we could still get along.” Eridan turned to look at him, a sadly earnest expression on his face. 

“Please tell me you didn’t call me over here just to do the same kind of stupid ‘do you like me’ routine you did back in the academy.” said Karkat. 

“We were friends back in the academy, remember!” Eridan protested. 

“Somehow, yes.” 

“A little more than friends, even, sometimes.” Eridan lowered his voice. “Do you remember that special time when we accidentally got locked in the pantry all night?” 

”I really wish I didn’t.” Karkat groaned. 

“I’m just worried is all,” said Eridan, “because we’re going into battle soon, and it’s probably going to be rough from what I can tell, and I get the feeling that you might not really care about my well-being, you know?” 

Karkat sighed. Eridan did have a brain under all the personality defects; it stood to reason he would notice the situation and be worried. 

“Look, Eridan.” said Karkat. “I may have had some harsh words for you in the past-” 

“Simpering jackass!” squawked Crabby. Karkat fed her a grape. 

“-but you’re a sailor of the Alternian Empire, and I’m not going to throw your life or anyone else’s away just because I don’t like you, alright?” 

“Oh.” Eridan looked relieved. “Thanks.” 

“Don’t mention it.” 

The funeral service came to a close, and a few sailors hoisted the makeshift casket overboard, where it sank in a solemn and dignified manner for all of three seconds before several sharks swarmed it and started tearing the body to pieces. Karkat just barely managed to disguise his snort of laughter as a cough. 

Eridan shook his head. “Fire the salute!” he ordered. 

“Haven’t you wasted enough ammunition on this voyage?” Karkat asked. 

“It’s just one shell.” 

One of _Sea Serpent_ ’s forward guns boomed, and a shell arced out into the heavens. Karkat watched its path with a sinking feeling. 

“Eridan?” 

“Yes?” 

“You made sure that you were aiming away from the rest of the fleet before firing that, right?” 

“Uhhhhh…..” 

There was a loud crash as the shell hit _Rainbow_ , exploding and knocking off part of a smokestack. 

“Heh. Whoops.” 

Karkat pinched the bridge of his nose. “God fucking damn it, Eridan.” 

\-------------- 

Nonsense didn’t stop happening after that. Eridan decided to pass the time by organizing a shark hunt; the hunters shot and killed about two hundred of the things, and the noise and the blood attracted several thousand more. A destroyer decided that it would be a good idea to try and have a bonfire on the deck and wound up having it in the hold and on the bridge too. A few more cults sprang up, including a ring of Signless-followers that Karkat was pretending not to notice. Crabby finished learning every swear word in the Alternian language and started picking up a few from Dersite and Skaian. 

But on the bright side, an Alternian convoy was finally showing up! At last, they could get back to sea, and continue voyaging thousands of kilometers to fight a superior fleet near its home waters, over possession of a port that Alternia had only owned for eight years and which wasn’t integral to its territory, on behalf of an empress who was stripping away the meagre rights of most of their sailors as they traveled. Hooray. 

The convoy would also be bringing messages and news from Alternia, so Karkat was standing by the rail waiting as the lead ship pulled up and dropped a gangplank to start carrying over crates. The first few crates were dropped on the deck, and Karkat pried the lid off of one to take a look. 

Sixty pairs of fur-lined boots awaited him. Karkat felt the tropical sun on his skin and the sweat dripping down his neck, and his eyelid twitched. 

“What the fuck!” squawked Crabby, who was starting to get a good feel for his moods. 

Karkat stormed onto the supply ship. The startled lowblood captain saluted as he approached. 

“Vice Admiral, sir!” 

“What the hell is this?” Karkat snapped. 

“Sir?” 

“I was supposed to be getting _ammunition_ , damn it!” 

“Ah, well, the ammunition convoy was a little delayed, sir, it’s about two days behind us.” the captain explained sheepishly. “In the meantime, we had noticed that you hadn’t really carried any winter gear when you left and thought we should bring you some.” 

“We didn’t carry any winter gear because space is limited and we’re sailing through the tropics! Don’t even bother unloading it. It’s not like we’ll have any trouble getting it at Eastcrown.” 

“Yes, sir.” said the supply captain. “Oh, while you’re here, sir.” He pulled an envelope out of his coat and handed it to Karkat. “Her Majesty sent you a personal message.” 

“Thank you.” Karkat took it and walked back to his cabin on the _Scythe_ to read it. 

As it turned out, the Condesce had updated her demands. Her new command was that the Northern Fleet had to defeat the Skaian fleet in battle, or else the blame and punishment would fall not only on Karkat, but on all of the other lowblood officers in the fleet. 

Karkat trembled with rage for a moment, before tearing the letter to pieces and hurling a pair of binoculars, along with everything else on the desk, out the window with a scream. Crabby fluttered around the room in dismay as Karkat beat on the wall in frustration. He had been starting to feel resigned about taking the fall for this mess himself, but now the other lowblood officers, the only ones he was proud to call his comrades, his friends, were going down too? While the highbloods who were largely responsible for the sorry state of the fleet got off scot free? Had this whole voyage just been a ploy for the Condesce to get rid of them all while she put the highbloods firmly back in power? 

Karkat sat down heavily at his desk, head in hands. He was a Vice Admiral of the Alternian Navy, with years of combat experience under his belt. He would not cry. 

Crabby landed on the desk and gently pecked Karkat’s cheek. 

“Son of a bitch.” the bird cooed gently. Karkat petted her head. 

“You said it, bird.” he said. 

Screaming and throwing a fit was satisfying but didn’t really solve anything. Karkat got up and left to see what else was going on. He walked onto the deck and found sailors rushing about in a panic. 

“I heard there was blood everywhere-” 

“Talele says he saw a couple of bodies-” 

“Could it have been the Skaians?” 

Karkat snatched a passing sailor by the collar. 

“What’s going on?” 

“Sir! There was an incident on _Trident_. Someone tried to assassinate the princess!” 

Five minutes. Could he have five fucking minutes without a crisis? 

“Hey!” he yelled as loud as he could. The sailors turned to look at him. 

“Stay calm and keep an eye out.” Karkat ordered. “And someone get a boat ready to bring me to _Trident_.” 

Nepeta had been with Feferi earlier, helping her drill her sailors on evacuating the ship, so hopefully (dear God did he hope) that they would both be fine. 

A few minutes later, Karkat burst into _Trident_ ’s sick bay. 

“No, really, it’s just a scratch, don’t worry about it.” Nepeta was reassuring Feferi, while a medic stitched up the inch-wide gash running from her shoulder to her elbow. 

“Nepeta?” 

“Sir- Ow!” Nepeta had reflexively tried to salute with her injured arm. Feferi, looking deeply concerned, laid a comforting hand on her uninjured shoulder. 

“What happened?” Karkat asked. 

“Some people tried to assassinate Feferi, sir. No worries, I was the only one hurt.” Nepeta paused for a second. “Well, except for the assassins, I guess. They’re all dead.” 

Karkat noticed Nepeta’s sword lying on a table, still dripping with blue and purple blood. 

“Sorry I couldn’t keep one alive for questioning.” said Nepeta. 

“Don’t worry about it.” said Karkat. “I’m just glad you’re alright. Or at least not too badly hurt.” 

“There’s no need for questioning, anyway.” Feferi cut in. “The assassins were from the Condesce. I recognized some of them from court.” She rubbed her temples tiredly; Karkat could see blue blood under her fingernails. 

“The Condesce? But why would she want to assassinate you?” Karkat asked. 

“Well, she doesn’t really like me. I’m not ruthless enough for her tastes.” Feferi shrugged. “Plus, she was furious about that letter I sent to the Prospitian Times. Apologizing sincerely is a show of weakness, if you ask her.” 

“Oh. Uh, should you be telling us this?” Karkat had suddenly realized that the Condesce wasn’t really shy about assassinating people. 

“Well, Nepeta’s already going on her list for stopping this attempt. Sorry, Nepeta.” 

“It’s worth it.” said Nepeta, smiling. 

“And you’re a command-level officer, so you probably count as need-to-know, but, ah, sorry, Ensign Houtek.” Feferi said to the medic, sounding genuinely sorry. 

“Whatever.” said Ensign Houtek, as she finished stitching up Nepeta. “Try not to move that arm around too much, Captain Leijon.” The medic saluted and left the room. 

“The Condesce doesn’t seem to like me all that much lately, either.” Karkat informed Feferi. “Any ideas on how we can all not die?” 

“Well, if the battle with the Skaians goes really well, we’ll all be heroes and untouchable for a while.” said Feferi. “Which is probably another reason she tried to assassinate me right now, just in case.” 

Karkat groaned and sat down. 

“What’s wrong?” Nepeta asked. 

“There is so goddamn much riding on winning the battle with the Skaians, but we probably can’t actually win the battle with the Skaians.” Wow, that summed up the situation in a depressingly simple manner, didn’t it? 

“We’re fucked!” squawked Crabby from Karkat’s shoulder, reading the room. 

“What the parrot said.” Karkat agreed. 

“Oh.” Feferi looked rather crestfallen. “Well, that’s not good. Is there anything we can do about it?” 

“If I think of anything, I’ll let you know.” said Karkat. “In the meantime, Nepeta, get some rest, and go easy on that arm.” 

Nepeta almost saluted but thought better of it at the last second. “Will do.” 

Karkat left and went back to _Scythe_ to stare at charts and ship blueprints and try to think of a strategy brilliant enough to overcome their massive problems with training, outdated ships, and morale when it came time to battle the Skaian fleet. It hadn’t worked any of the other times he had tried it, but hey, maybe the nineteenth time would be the charm. 

\------------------- 

Two days later, while waiting for the long-awaited ammunition convoy to finish loading their ships, Karkat was in his cabin with Feferi, Terezi, and Kanaya. The four of them were having a meeting to discuss court politics and whether there was any chance of talking the Condesce into sparing anybody who would be affected if the fleet failed to defeat the Skaians. Unfortunately, it turned out that the answer was ‘no’. 

“She’s really not a very nice person.” Feferi concluded, putting in her entry for Understatement of the Decade. 

“I guess we’ll just go with the plan to sail around the eastern edge of Skaia and hope we get an opportunity.” said Karkat. 

“We’ll be ready.” said Kanaya. Terezi nodded in agreement. 

“I can’t say anything for the rest of this sorry fleet, though.” she added. 

“We’ll just have to do our best.” said Karkat. “I’ll see you guys around.” 

Kanaya and Terezi left to get back to their ships, but Feferi lingered for a moment. 

“Can I talk to you about something personal for a minute?” she asked. 

“Go for it.” 

Feferi hesitated for a moment. “You’re friends with Nepeta, right?” 

“I am.” Karkat confirmed. 

“What does she like?” 

Was Feferi blushing just a little, or was that just his imagination? 

“What do you mean?” he asked. 

“Well, I wanted to thank her, since she helped fight off those assassins for me, and got hurt doing it. Not to mention that she’s been so helpful in getting my crew up to standard, and such a good friend, and…” Feferi trailed off with a wistful sigh. 

No, it wasn’t his imagination. “Do you, you know…” he started to ask Feferi. 

“Ridiculous pining!” squawked Crabby from where she was preening herself on Karkat’s dresser. She was the best damn bird. 

“Well, yes.” Feferi admitted. 

“That’s good, because I’ll bet Nepeta could really go for a kiss.” 

Feferi blinked, startled. “I bet she’s a good kisser.” she said wistfully. 

(She was, Karkat knew, thanks to that one night after the Battle of Ederas when they had both been drunk on adrenaline, victory, and alcohol. But that had very much been a one-time thing, so he wasn’t about to bring it up.) 

“So, I guess you’re into heroines, huh?” said Karkat. 

“No, or well, yes actually, but it’s not just that.” said Feferi. “Nepeta’s enthusiastic, and she’s a joy to be around, and she treats me like I’m a person and not some national asset or art piece like I get at court,” 

“Uh, Feferi.” Karkat tried to cut in. 

“And she’s so fun, and she’s got a cute smile, and really great abs, and…” 

Feferi trailed off as Karkat insistently cleared his throat, and turned around to finally see Nepeta, her arm still bandaged, standing in the doorway. She was blushing as green as a cucumber. 

“Vice Admiral, sir, a report from Commodore Serket just came in for you with the ammunition shipment, sir.” Nepeta said quickly, before handing it over and making a slightly hasty exit. 

“Oh, dear.” said Feferi. 

“Go for it.” Karkat told her. “She thinks your laugh is cute.” 

“Really?” said Feferi. “Alright, then.” 

She adjusted her hair, then went walking out into the corridor, calling after Nepeta. Karkat closed the door behind her to give the two of them a little privacy. It was about time that Nepeta found someone who could appreciate her. 

He turned his attention to the report from Vriska. Apparently she had somehow talked the Prospitians into letting her use the Inland Sea canals, and thus her squadron of reinforcements had a much shorter route to sail and would actually be able to catch up to them in time to be of some actual use. Karkat felt a brief spark of hope; if Vriska had convinced the Western Fleet to detach some of their more worthwhile ships, they might have a chance. He eagerly turned to the attached list of ships that Vriska had been able to get… 

And his fragile hopes were picked up and dashed against a wall. Apparently Vriska hadn’t been able to convince the Western Fleet’s commanders to detach any actually good ships, but had nonetheless taken Karkat’s statement that every ship helped to heart, and scraped the bottom of the barrel hard enough to get splinters. 

The absolute best ship Vriska had obtained was _Javelin_ , a thirty-five year old _Pike_ -class battleship that had been relegated to coastal defense duties for the last thirty-three years, since it had come out that there was a design flaw in the class making their keels liable to snapping in half if a compartment or two was flooded in the wrong spot. Karkat was pretty sure that some of the oldest ships actually still had wooden hulls with a little armor plating tacked on. The squadron was so old that a few modern destroyers could probably sink the lot in an hour; a modern battleship would essentially get free target practice. 

If Vriska caught up to them, the Northern Fleet would actually be weaker; any meagre advantage that Vriska’s ships might give them in terms of firepower or drawing enemy fire would be outweighed by how much they would have to slow down so the antiques could keep pace. Luckily, Karkat had an idea. 

He left his cabin and walked to the bridge, Crabby fluttering over to perch on his shoulder; they were finally, finally, finally about to get underway again. Nepeta was waiting for him in her usual spot by the signals officer, smiling like the cat that ate the canary. Her uniform was a little disheveled, and there was a smear of fuschia lipstick on the corner of her mouth. 

“You missed a spot.” Karkat informed her. She hastily wiped it off. 

“Is Vriska actually going to get us more ships?” she asked cheerfully. 

“Yeah, but they make the ones we have right now look positively modern by comparison.” Karkat said glumly. 

“Oh, that’s a shame.” said Nepeta, still cheerful. Her good mood was better armored than most of the fleet, apparently. 

“Anyway, when you send reports back home about our progress, make sure that you don’t include our location or heading.” Karkat ordered. 

“But then how is Vriska going to be able to find us?” asked Nepeta. 

Karkat looked at her for a moment. 

“Good fucking luck!” squawked Crabby. 

“Ah. As you wish.” Nepeta went to see that it was done. 

Ah, what the hell, she was a friend, and Karkat might not have a whole lot of time left to do nice things for friends. 

“One more thing, Captain Leijon.” He let a little of his amusement enter his voice. 

She turned and looked at him expectantly. 

“We’ve already had one assassination attempt on our princess, and I’m worried about her safety. I need someone to stick as close to her as possible for the rest of the voyage until we get to Skaian waters. Do you think you can do that?” 

“Sir, yes, sir!” said Nepeta, with incredible enthusiasm. “Thanks, Karkat.” She ran off to go catch up with Feferi. 

Well, at least someone in this wretched fleet would be having a good time. Karkat smiled and turned to watch the waves as they prepared to set sail. 

\--------------- 

They almost made it across the Natamel Ocean before Vriska caught up with them. Pity they couldn’t put more variance in their route without being ridiculous. 

“Hey, Vantas!” Vriska called out as her boat pulled up to the _Scythe_. “You sure don’t make it easy to catch up with you.” 

“Sorry, Commodore. Security concerns.” Karkat deadpanned. 

“Riiiiiiiight.” said Vriska, skeptically. 

“Damn straight!” squawked Crabby from Karkat’s shoulder. 

“Nice bird.” Vriska chuckled as she climbed aboard. 

“Thanks.” 

“So, what’s the plan?” Vriska asked. 

That was a good question. The plan to sail around the eastern edge of Skaia was shot; with Vriska’s tubs in tow they would be lucky to make it a quarter of the way around without being spotted, and once they were spotted they would be harried and harassed the whole way, and the Skaian fleet could intercept them at its leisure. So that left… 

“Well, Plan A is to just sail into the Surro Strait at top speed, make for some fog, and hope we can get by without them catching us and join up with the ships still left at Eastcrown." 

“That’s it?” asked Vriska. 

“It’s nice and simple. We don’t want too many moving parts for this fleet to screw up, you know?” said Karkat. 

“Hah!” Vriska laughed. “That’s fair. Hopefully our fleet can at least manage to do that right.” 

\--------- 

Some days later, as the Northern Fleet finally entered the Surro Strait, Commander Equius Zahhak peered out into the fog from the bow of his destroyer, _Longbow_. He supposed that maybe he ought to be on the bridge, but he liked to look at things with his own eyes. 

_Longbow_ was on patrol on the leading edge of the fleet, so there weren’t many ships in sight; none at all at the moment, in fact, since the fog was so thick. No, wait, there was one; a torpedo boat, flying the Alternian flag. It was a little bit weird-looking, but Equius had to admit he hadn’t paid too much attention to the look of the rest of the fleet. 

The torpedo boat pulled closer, and her skipper popped out. He looked somewhat odd. His grey skin had a sickly pallor, almost as though it had been painted on, his horns were thin and almost looked like sections of a broken broomstick, and his thick glasses, large and bulbous nose, and big bushy mustache were odd affectations for a troll. But Equius wasn’t about to be so rude as to comment on it. 

“Good morning.” he simply said instead. “Might I ask with whom I am speaking?” 

“Of course.” said the strange captain. His accent was heavy, he must have been from somewhere inland. There were a lot of conscripts like that in the fleet. “This is the good Alternian torpedo boat, ah, _Goreymurder_ , and I am Com-” 

The poor fellow was overcome with a little coughing fit; between that and the pallor of his skin, he must have been ill. 

“Ah, sorry,” he continued, “I am Captain, er, Johnno Egburr. We seem to have gotten a little mixed up in the fog. Might you assist us?” 

“Of course.” said Equius. “The fleet is still on its north-northwest course, until the planned turn to north-northeast at 0930. The main body of the fleet is still back that way.” He pointed in their general direction. 

“I see.” said Johnno. “Thank you kindly.” 

“You are most welcome.” 

The strange torpedo boat pulled away and slipped back into the fog. 

“Uh, sir,” said an ensign, “are you sure that wasn’t actually an enemy torpedo boat?” 

“Ensign, we’ve already had so many false alarms about Skaian torpedo boats. There’s no need to stir paranoia at such a tense moment.” Equius said. “Just signal the admiral and let him know about this incident in case he wants to make sure our torpedo boats are better directed. 

\---------------- 

“Motherfucker!” Karkat screamed as he consigned another pair of binoculars to the depths. 

“Motherfucker!” Crabby echoed. 

“You know,” Nepeta said ruefully, “when I helped Equius get that destroyer captaincy, I had assumed that he would just be getting easy patrol duties.” 

“Well, now that surprise is out the window, over the fence, and sprinting off into the horizon, I guess we had better prepare for some sort of engagement. Signal the battleships to form line abreast so the destroyers have an easier time covering them from Skaian torpedo boats.” 

Ten minutes later, Karkat was yelling again. 

“Line abreast! I said line abreast!” He shook his fist at the scrum that was forming where _Talon_ had turned the wrong way. “How hard is it to form a fucking line abreast! A professional navy ought to be able to do basic maneuvers without fucking it up!” 

“We should have the formation back in order within a few minutes, sir.” said Nepeta. 

“Oh, great.” Karkat snapped. 

“Fucking spectacular!” Crabby added before he could. She was one smart bird. 

“Yeah, exactly.” Karkat grumbled. “Order the fleet to skip the turn at 0930. Maybe it’ll buy us some time before they catch up with us.” 

Buy them some time it did: it took a whole fifteen minutes after they were supposed to make the turn for any Skaian torpedo boats to show up. A scattered handful of the things started making a run at some of the battleships and cruisers. 

“Evasive maneuvers!” yelled Captain Nitram. 

“Belay that!” yelled Karkat. “Hold position, and signal the other ships to do the same, and only use the secondary batteries to fire at them.” 

“Sir?” Nepeta asked. 

“So few torpedo boats, and only one per ship? Not to mention that they’re all too focused on their own evasive maneuvers to get any good shots off. It’s a ploy.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

They waited out the first few torpedo boats, which dodged some intermittent fire from various ships’ secondary batteries and fired a few hasty torpedoes which all missed. 

And then, emerging from the fading morning fog, came the rest of the swarm, in a couple of groups, where they would have been in a perfect position to pick off a few ships if the formation had broken up to try and evade the first set and had been in the process of reloading their main batteries. Unfortunately for them, the fleet was ready and waiting in formation, and the Skaian position was only perfect for being targets. 

“Fire! All guns, fire!” Karkat yelled. “Hammer them!” 

There was the staccato roaring of the fleet’s guns, and the full firepower of the Northern Fleet came roaring down on the little torpedo boats. 

And missed. 

Well, not entirely. A few of the enemy boats were stricken by near misses or damaged, but none of them were being blown to matchsticks the way they ought to have been. In fairness, whoever was commanding the boats (Commodore Egbert was his name, Karkat was pretty sure) had been quick to recognize that his plan hadn’t worked and had ordered his boats to split up and evade instead of trying to attack, but it was still some truly pathetic gunnery on the part of Karkat’s fleet. Hell, with a little luck, the Skaians might not have even lost any sailors. 

The torpedo boats dispersed into the last shreds of morning fog, apparently not keen to try their luck again. At least the fleet was safe from them for now. 

Karkat sighed. The Northern Fleet had missed their figurative shot, too. The two fleets had rough parity in terms of torpedo boats and destroyers; if the Skaian torpedo boat flotilla had taken a big hit, they could maybe have tried sending their smaller ships after the Skaians in a swarm while the battleships and cruisers focused on staying alive and active enough to draw the enemy capital ships in. But that was out now. All they could do for the moment was sail on and keep an eye out. 

As the day wore on, more and more Skaian ships were sighted. By afternoon, there had been Skaian ships sighted in all directions, and they were starting to get some reports about the size of the Skaian fleet. 

“We have confirmed reports of at least eight Skaian battleships.” Nepeta informed Karkat, a grim expression on her face. 

“We’ve been checking the times and positions to make sure that Harley’s not moving them around to look like there’s more right? I’m not getting fooled like Dualscar was.” 

“Yes, sir. They have been moving deceptively, but we have confirmed through silhouettes and close observations and such that there are at least eight.” 

Karkat sighed and leaned against a wall. Eight battleships meant that the Skaians had managed to raise at least two of the _Trident_ -class battleships from Point Violet. Even with their deficiencies in crewing and so on, _Scythe, Talon_ , and _Trident_ could take those two between the three of them. _Death’s Head_ could take on one of the three Skaian _Salamander_ -class battleships that they had started with. With Vriska’s reinforcements, that left one well-crewed and eight badly crewed Alternian battleships ranging from ‘outdated’ to ‘so old it might sink by itself if you give it a minute’ to take on two modern _Salamander_ -classes and three state-of-the-art _Diamond_ -classes, the latter of which were faster than all but the lightest of Karkat’s ships, and whose guns out-ranged even the _Trident_ -classes by nearly two miles. It was hopeless. 

The situation with the cruisers was even worse, since the Northern Fleet had an even smaller proportion of modern cruisers, and thanks to bad crewing and command _Rainbow_ was the only one that had any hope of taking on a Skaian cruiser one-on-one. The situation with the destroyers and torpedo boats was even worse than that, since on top of everything else the Alternian fleet didn’t even particularly outnumber the Skaians in that category. 

The Skaians had better training, better morale, better guns, better armor, better torpedoes and shells, better engines, better maintenance, better officers for the most part, better rangefinders (designed by defected Alternian naval engineer Sollux Captor, to add insult to injury), and hell, probably even better food. The long journey had left the Alternian ships dilapidated, and also fouled to hell and gone, because apparently they hadn’t been slow enough already. 

Karkat couldn’t even use his desperate last-resort plan to sacrifice a part of his fleet as a decoy while the rest ran like hell, since the Skaians were surrounding them. He was all out of ideas. He suspected everyone else was too, but he still had to check. 

“Get all of the important officers.” he ordered Nepeta. “We need to talk.” 

\------------- 

A short while later, Karkat, Vriska, Terezi, Kanaya, Aradia, and Feferi were standing around and brainstorming, by which he meant that Vriska was throwing out increasingly ridiculous ideas and being shot down. 

“We could have all of our torpedo boats make suicide runs and blow themselves up on the enemy capital ships.” she was suggesting. 

“Even if our crews were both dedicated enough and skilled enough to pull that off, the distance between the two fleets is too wide and the Skaian gunnery is too good.” said Kanaya. “There wouldn’t be enough of them that made it to the enemy to have the desired effect.” 

“We could throw everything except the crew overboard to lighten the ships, make full steam ahead, and try to ram and board the Skaians.” 

“Yeah, and we could also anchor our ships, pull our pants down, and signal ‘please shoot me’ over and over again.” Aradia rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Vriska.” 

“Wait, no, I have a better version. We put boarding parties in all of the boats and maybe a few torpedo boats with their lights dimmed or something, and they head out and try to board the enemy vessels while the rest of the fleet fights a distracting action.” 

“We don’t have enough crew to take all of their ships.” said Terezi. “Also, they’ll be on the lookout for torpedo boats, so there’s no way they would miss the boats coming up. Let’s try and stick to sane ideas.” 

“Well, excuse me for trying to be helpful!” Vriska snapped. “I don’t see you making any suggestions.” 

“I’m not going to try something ridiculous just to feel like I’m doing something.” Terezi shot back. 

“Oh, don’t you start like that again…” 

Vriska and Terezi descended into an argument, and Karkat tuned it out. 

“I’m starting to think that Sollux had the right idea.” Aradia muttered. 

That was right, the two of them had been friends. The legislacerators had actually theorized that Captor had help from a senior officer in his escape; having gotten to know her a little better over the voyage, Karkat would bet that Aradia had been that officer. 

“Are you still in contact with him?” Karkat asked. 

Aradia thought for a moment, then shrugged. “It’s not like secrets really matter anymore at this point. Yes, I am. He’s been doing well since he defected. Apparently Skaia is rather nice. The current war was delayed for some time while their Senate debated whether the odds of winning were worth risking the lives of their soldiers.” 

Well, wasn’t that different? Especially in comparison to their current mission, which had been obviously doomed from before they had even set out, but which they had nonetheless been forced into for the sake of pride and who knew what else. 

Karkat felt like he was in a haze. They had to fight and win the battle, because it was their only chance of convincing the Condesce to ease up on the lowbloods again, and also because she would destroy them if they didn’t. But the battle couldn’t be won. 

If they tried to break out from the Skaian fleet’s encirclement, they would be annihilated. If they tried to scatter in all directions, they would be annihilated piecemeal. If they tried to stand and fight a conventional battle, they would be annihilated. If they flung themselves at the Skaian fleet with everything in them, they would be annihilated particularly hard, but they might do some actual damage to the Skaians first. Enough damage to accomplish anything other than assuaging Alternian national pride a little? No. 

And of course, whatever happened, the noble officers would skip out at the first sign of trouble, and thousands of lowblood conscripts would die for nothing. At least when they had fought Derse, they had been defending some actual Alternian subjects. This was a petty war, started when Alternia had tried to extend its colonization program south and Skaia had risen to the defense of its friends. 

But the Condesce didn’t care about the lives of her subjects, not even in the sense that one might care for a useful tool, as Karkat had hoped she might. He and so many other lowbloods had fought and triumphed for the empire, and this was their reward? Even if they miraculously defeated the Skaians, they would go back to an empire that had used them up as needed and was in the process of throwing them away. Were they really going to die for Alternia, after what Alternia was proving willing to do to them? 

Fight the battle, lose, and die. Fight the battle, lose, survive, go home, and die. Fight the battle, somehow win, go home, and die for some other stupid thing after being oppressed for a while first. 

Karkat looked around the room. Vriska had spent years getting good sailors killed for no reason through her recklessness, but because of her blood, she was a high officer set to go higher. Feferi was the first noble he had ever met who he truly liked, and the Condesce tried to have her assassinated specifically because of her good qualities. Kanaya had served faithfully and excellently for years, and was rewarded by having to play sheepdog to a bunch of idiots on a doomed voyage. 

They had to fight the battle to have any chance to be received by Alternia ever again, but there was no course where they fought the battle that didn’t end in disaster. No course where they fought the battle. 

Oh. 

An idea came to Karkat. It went against his orders, his nature, everything he had ever been taught, and his oath as an Alternian sailor, but it was the only course. 

He got up and left the room, motioning the others to follow him. Terezi and Vriska were too caught up in their argument to notice, but the rest slipped out after him into the hallway, where Nepeta had been waiting in case any messages needed to be carried. It was probably good that Vriska had stayed back; she wouldn’t like his idea at all. Karkat took a deep breath and addressed everyone. 

“I have an idea about what we should do.” he said. “But it’s kind of drastic.” 

\---------------- 

Admiral Jade Harley fidgeted restlessly with the trinkets on her desk as she waited for the meeting to start. As her fleet had closed in on the Alternians, a torpedo boat had broken off from the Alternian fleet flying a flag of truce. As it had approached, it had signaled that Vice Admiral Vantas wanted to meet with her. 

She had agonized over whether to accept. Vantas was known to be tricky, but no one had ever heard of him violating the laws of war, and the torpedo boat carrying him had thrown all of its weapons over the side before coming within firing range of _Emerald_. The Skaian fleet had a great advantage over the Alternians, but if the Alternian fleet was at all in proper fighting shape it could still do a lot of damage before it was defeated. It had been larger than intelligence reports had led them to expect, and John was still a bit shaken up from earlier, when his torpedo boats had tried to harass the Alternians, Vantas had seen through his maneuver, and the flotilla had been very lucky to escape without any deaths or serious damage. 

John and Rose were standing at attention behind Jade’s desk. Dave was leaning against the wall, hand on the hilt of his sabre and ready to spring into action, though someone who wasn’t familiar with him would probably have thought he looked rather casual. The tension in the air was thick enough to taste. 

An ensign poked his head in the door. “Admiral, Vantas has arrived. He boarded alone, and we checked to make sure there were no explosives, as you ordered.” 

“Send him up.” 

What on earth could he want? Jade waited with bated breath. 

After what felt like an hour but was probably less than a minute, Vantas entered the room. He was wearing his dress uniform, and looked to be the model of military discipline from head to toe, except for his slightly tousled hair. He was armed with the sword that one would expect to see attached to a dress uniform, which was fine by Jade; even if he tried something, she was willing to bet that Dave was a lot better with his ceremonial sword than Vantas was, and she had a rather un-ceremonial shotgun under her desk just in case. Vantas’s face looked like he was trying very hard not to have any kind of expression, and he was succeeding. He was shorter than she had been expecting. 

Vantas stopped an appropriate distance in front of her desk and nodded respectfully. 

“Admiral Harley.” he said. 

“Vice Admiral Vantas. What did you want to talk about?” 

Vantas drew himself up, and gave what sounded like a prepared speech. 

“I have looked closely at our respective forces and positions, and determined that the fleet under my command has no reasonable hope of victory, and that furthermore, engaging your fleet in battle wouldn’t produce anything worthwhile.” He took a deep breath. “And so, I have come here to negotiate the surrender of my forces.” 

“You’ve what?” said John. Even Dave and Rose, unflappable as they usually were, looked startled. 

Jade was pretty startled herself. Alternia’s national reputation for as long as it had been a nation had been one of ferocity and courage. It had been centuries since an Alternian force of any real size had surrendered, and the general who had done it was still reviled. And now Vantas was going to just walk in and surrender his fleet before the main body of his enemies had even fired a shot? Before a single sailor on either side had actually died? While still in possession of a numerically larger force? 

“If this is some kind of trick-” Rose started. 

“My fleet,” Vantas cut her off, a trickle of frustration leaking into his voice, “is in no shape to fight, despite my best efforts. Its crews are for the most part almost entirely untrained, and many are pulled from provinces that don’t even have navigable waters in them. It cannot perform even the most basic maneuvers without throwing itself into confusion. Your commodore can attest to its truly appalling gunnery. Most of its ships are outdated, many are barely fit to sail, and all of them are suffering from the long voyage. The empress that it serves has sent it here despite its obvious inability to achieve anything useful simply for the sake of pride, as far as I can tell, while the sailors who are asked to die have the few rights they possess stripped away back at home. Nearly all of my captains lack any sort of experience, skill, courage, or decency. We have been outmaneuvered and surrounded, and even by the most blindly optimistic assessment of the situation, nothing we could possibly do to your fleet would make even the slightest difference to the outcome of the war, while fighting any sort of battle would result in us being slaughtered. I won’t send thousands of my sailors to their deaths just for the sake of national pride, and if the nation doesn’t like it, then they can blame it on me. I surrender.” He sighed. “On one condition.” 

“Name it.” said Jade. 

“That among the captured sailors, any who wish to return to Alternia are sent home as quickly as possible, and any who don’t can become free citizens in Skaia.” 

“Agreed.” said Jade. Technically, that was the sort of thing the Senate needed to approve, but they would never object to taking in refugees from Alternia or anywhere, especially when it allowed a battle such as this to end without bloodshed. 

Vantas sagged a bit, then unbuckled his sword and handed it over to Jade, still sheathed. She turned it over in her hands for a moment, then handed it back to him. 

“Keep it, Vice Admiral.” 

The barest flicker of a smile passed over his face as he put it back in its place. 

“You know, this is pretty unprecedented.” Dave said. 

“Trust me, I know.” said Vantas. He suddenly looked rather tired. “But this was the only course. I would have died for Alternia, once. But the Condesce has made it quite clear that she doesn’t care about me or my comrades, and I won’t spill blood for her anymore. There was a moment where I had hope that we might make Alternia a better place, but the moment has passed.” He closed his eyes and breathed for a moment, then opened them. “I suppose we had better get the rest of the details hammered out.” 

Jade gave herself a moment to take in the fact that they were going to finish the war without anyone else dying. Then she stood up from her desk and extended a hand towards Vantas. 

“Let’s get to work, then.” she said. 

Vantas hesitated a moment before shaking it. 

“By all means.” 

\------------- 

Karkat watched from _Emerald_ ’s observation deck as his fleet was taken into custody. Or, well, nearly all of it was, at least. 

He had been worried that the Northern Fleet might not accept that they were giving up without a fight, but after he had sent a message to the crews emphasizing that he was surrendering to avoid their pointless deaths, and that they could defect to Skaia if they wanted, things had gone off with only minor hitches. The crews, already demoralized and upset with the things going on back home, had collapsed, and the few officers that had tried to muster any resistance had been quickly overwhelmed. Karkat had gotten to see Captain Codakk tied to a chair and being hauled to the brig by his own sailors, yelping ineffectually the whole way, which almost made this whole affair worth it. 

The only Alternian ship that had escaped was _Widowmaker_. Vriska had reportedly been furious at the news of the surrender, and had strong-armed Terezi and her crew into making a series of daring evasive maneuvers that only got them out of the encirclement because Admiral Harley had decided not to bother trying to stop a lone outdated battleship from escaping. 

The lone escapee from the Treacherous Surrender, who had tried to countermand Coward Karkat the lowblood the whole way. Vriska was going to get a whole lot of mileage out of that. Well, she was welcome to it. Karkat was beyond caring, though he hoped that things worked out alright for Terezi. 

Eridan had stopped to yell at Karkat on his way to be politely confined on one of the Skaian battleships. 

“Don’t you care about your oath as a sailor?” he had accused. “Don’t you care about Alternia?” 

He did. More than Eridan knew. But he cared about other things too. 

A flutter of wings and a squawk distracted him from his thoughts. 

“Find the frickin’ thing!” Crabby croaked happily as she flew down to perch on his shoulder. 

“Hey, you came looking for me.” said Karkat, cheerfully stroking her feathers. “You’re the best bird. You know that, right?” 

“Damn straight.” she said, affectionately pecking at his cheek. 

Karkat walked around the deck to get a different view, rounded the corner, and almost ran right into Admiral Harley and Captain Strider. The two of them were leaning into each other and watching the waves, looking very much like an old married couple. 

“Sorry to intrude.” said Karkat. 

“No worries, man.” said Strider. His hand had flickered to his sword for a moment when Karkat had rounded the corner, but he quickly relaxed. 

“It’s quite a sight, isn’t it?” Harley observed, gesturing out at where the combined Skaian and Alternian fleets were getting ready to sail back to the Skaian capital; Pūana City, on the island of Lofaf. 

“Fucking colossal!” Crabby agreed. 

Admiral Harley giggled adorably. “Oh my god, you’ve got a parrot. That’s great.” 

“You didn’t have that when you came on board.” Strider pointed out. 

Karkat shrugged. “She follows me around. Don’t you, Crabby?” The parrot preened a bit from her perch. 

“Crabby, what a great name.” Harley seemed to find the parrot very endearing. 

Karkat smiled a bit at that, but his smile faded as he turned to look at his fleet, now underway towards the enemy capital, but as vanquished foes, not conquerors. He wondered how many of his sailors would return to Alternia, and how many of them would resent him for the surrender. He had already heard ‘coward’ and ‘traitor’ being thrown around a lot, and he was sure that it would only get worse as the news got back to Alternia. Everything that he and the sailors under him had done for Alternia in the Dersite Wars and the other little skirmishes, wiped away in a single decision. But it wasn’t like he could have done anything else. 

“Are you alright?” Harley asked him. 

“What do you mean?” he said. 

“Well, you look a little, uh,” She paused to think of a word. 

“You look like a grammar school student who spent three months staying up late to work on a science fair project that would win first prize, who just got fifth place because the teachers just gave the ribbons to their favorite kids without looking at the projects, and now you’re walking home and your older brother is going to laugh at you when you get back and also it’s raining and you got mud on your favorite jacket.” said Strider. 

“You look kind of down.” said Harley, rolling her eyes fondly at her captain. 

“I mean, I am a little down.” said Karkat. “I surrendered because it was the only choice left that I could live with, in both a literal and figurative sense, but the rest of Alternia damn sure isn’t going to see it that way.” He sighed. “I was actually proud of my service against the Dersites, you know. Hell, I still kind of am.” 

“You should be.” said Harley. “I read the battle records.” She reached over and put a friendly hand on his shoulder. “I know I’m biased here, but for what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing, putting your people’s lives ahead of pride.” 

“Yeah, I know.” said Karkat. 

“But it still stings a bit, huh?” said Strider. 

“Yeah.” 

The three of them watched the waves in silence for a minute, before Strider spoke up again. 

“So, do you reckon you’ll stay in Skaia or go back to Alternia?” he asked. 

“Well,” said Karkat, “if I ever set foot in Alternia again, the Condesce is going to have me drawn and quartered in Fuschia Square, then hang my torso headfirst in a tiger cage like the world’s screamiest cat toy, so I think I’ll stay in Skaia.” 

“Does she really execute people like that?” Harley asked. “I always figured that was propaganda, and she just had them shot or something.” 

“Oh, yeah, she can be really creative when she’s annoyed.” said Karkat. 

“Don’t worry, Skaia will take you in.” said Strider. “We’re happy to help people get away from that sort of thing.” 

“Do you think the offer to stay in Skaia will get a lot of takers?” Harley asked. 

Karkat shrugged. Feferi was staying in Skaia to start organizing subversive movements back home, and between Karkat and Feferi, Nepeta was sure to stay in Skaia too. He had seen Kanaya striking up a conversation with Colonel Lalonde about the process of transferring into Skaian service; apparently she was considering just switching _Rainbow_ ’s flag and carrying on like before. Aradia had already been arranging a lunch date to catch up with Sollux. Past that, Karkat couldn’t speak for anyone. 

“Who knows?” he told Harley. 

“We’ll do our best to make sure Skaia is welcoming to anyone who wants to stay.” she reassured him. “Not that I’m really worried about that being a problem. Skaia’s a nice country." 

“That’s good to hear, since apparently I’ll be there for a while.” said Karkat. He sighed and looked back out to sea. 

Strider glanced at his wristwatch. “We should probably be getting back to the bridge.” he told Harley. 

“That time already, huh?” she said. “Alrighty then. See you around, Vice Admiral.” 

The two of them walked away, and Karkat was left alone with his thoughts. 

“Nice fucking day.” Crabby squawked. 

Also a bird. Karkat shook his head. The course was set, and there was no turning back. All he could do was sail it. 

He watched the waves crash against the side of the ship, and for the first time in months, let himself relax and listen to the sea. 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mdi_Fh9_Ag&t=1723s
> 
> The sequel, when/if it's written, will probably have some JadeDaveKat. See you next time!


End file.
